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rectangulated, hexradiate, and (rare) the multihamate birotulate spicules.

The occurrence of long anchoring spicula in Pharonema Grayii and P. Carpenteri is, I should imagine, very conclusive evidence that the rope in Hyalonema is a portion of the head.

Dr. Gray says he supposes I am not aware that specimens of Hyalonema ocour more frequently without than with its parasitic sponge. This is very probably correct; but they had no doubt lost the sponge, either from the decay of the sarcode or been pulled off by the dredger or diver; in the former case, the rope, when divested of its spongy head, would in all probability soon be invested by the parasitic Palythoa. Dr. Perceval Wright, who has had the opportunity of examining specimens in a living state, is quite satisfied as to the parasitic nature of the Palythoa.

Norwich.

A

FRED. KITTON.

LAND-SLIP NEAR NORTHWICH,

CHESHIRE.

FEW weeks ago the writer went in search of a reported land-slip in the salt district of Cheshire. An occurrence of this sort is not unfrequent in the neighbourhood of the Salt-works, as those who happen to live near them know to their cost; and any one traversing the narrow, tortuous, and unpicturesque streets of Northwich may see the results of minor sinkings of the land, in houses whose walls bear marks of "faults," one part having slipped, leaving rents from basement to roof; others, whose windows are all awry, presenting a somewhat grotesque appearance. This sinking and disturbance of the land are caused by the saltmining operations carried on beneath.

The salt-beds occur in what geologists denominate the Triassic formation, from its tripartite character, and it is in the red clays of the upper group of rocks in which salt is found, either in a state of solution as brine, or in masses of pure rock salt 90 to 100 feet thick. Beneath these lie the well-known "water-stones," bearing the ripplemarks and reptilian impressions.

Arriving at Northwich, I learned that the place of which I was in quest lay about six miles away, and close to the Whitegate station, on the line from Northwich to Winsford. Proceeding thither, I found the object of my search in among the fields, which are all used for agricultural purposes, and belong to the adjacent farm of Marton Hall. One of the peculiarities of this land-slip is its distance from any salt-works, the nearest being at Winsford, about two miles off.

The chasm, which is almost of a circular shape, is upwards of 300 yards in circumference, and about 60 or 70 feet deep; the sides are remarkably steep,

and expose the reddish clay of which the whole of the land-slip is composed. At the bottom lies a lake of water of a greenish hue, which is brine, and as the declivity was so steep and the clay wet from recent rain, I refrained from descending, having in my mind the "facilis descensus Averni," and the fear of a sudden and undesirable pickling in the briny water below. The shape of the interior of the chasm is that of an inverted cone, or the empty crater of a volcano, and the first question that naturally rises to one's lips is, Where has the land gone? for here you have not, as in many land-slips I have seen, the earth or rock lying in confused and broken masses around, but there is not the remotest. trace of anything that once stood there; hedges and trees all have disappeared into the bowels of the earth, and lie beneath the water that covers the bottom.

Before offering an explanation of these curious phenomena, I must premise that most of the salt used for culinary purposes in England is made from the brine, which is pumped up from the brine-holding strata beneath; and we may fairly presume that the district for miles round the actual workings is thus being gradually drained. Supposing then that water percolating through the overlying beds, or some system of underground drainage, has come into contact with the deposit of rock salt, this would in course of time be dissolved, and, as the district becomes drained of the brine, leave hollows or caverns; and presuming some weak spot in the superincumbent beds of clay overlying one of these hollows or caverns, one can easily imagine the clay gradually falling away and taking the place of the original salt-deposit, until at last the surface land, not having sufficient support from beneath, has fallen bodily into those presumable subterraneous caverns, which originally were filled with salt. M. S.

THE SAFFRON (Crocus sativus).

A SHORT note drawing attention to this Eastern

plant having appeared in SCIENCE-GOSSIP for December, will you grant me space for a few details?

Although this crocus is found in a wild state on the sunny plains of Italy, it most decidedly has been traced to the East originally.

It is one of the plants mentioned in the garden of the Wise King (Cant. iv. verse 14), and the Arabs of the present day value highly the virtues of their Zafran.

The flowers are lilac-coloured, the stigmas a deep orange; and these stigmas, with a portion of the styles, afford the saffron of the shops.

The saffron crocus was first cultivated at Walden in the time of Edward III. by a Sir Thomas Smith,

and the place was henceforward known as Saffron Walden.

If you want to grow saffron, you should plant the bulbs in July, in rows. The soil ought to be rich and light. About the third week in September you will see the leaves appear in little delicate tufts; they grow immediately from the bulb, and are enveloped in a thin membrane or sheath. The flowers proceed from the leaves on a very short scape, and may be expected to bloom early in the month of October. They will come up in succession for a month, six or ten, or even more, from one plant; and, to insure fine saffron, ought to be gathered early of a morning, the stigma and style picked out and dried carefully in the sun.

The leaves keep green in winter, but die off in May; so a saffron-bed looks very bare and ugly from this month until autumn.

English saffron is considered the best. The Spanish Azafran is dipped in oil to preserve it, and this is supposed to take from its value.

Saffron is a favourite remedy with old women for "lowness of spirits" (for diseases which medical

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men would at once recognize as nervous), but it represented in fig. 68; the three parts being folded will in some constitutions produce most undesirable effects, and make the before crying patient burst into fits of excessive laughter, reminding one of those very remarkable pictures which so often accompany the advertisements of an immediate cure for the toothache."

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The Hebrews call this plant, or the produce of it (for I am not quite certain which), Karkom; and I read in a book of Eastern travels lately that a lilac flower exactly like this crocus grows on the bare dry sand near "Wady Ramleh."

The Meadow-saffron is a different plant; from it colchicum is produced: and we likewise have an early purple crocus-the C. vernus, or spring crocus; but neither of the latter possesses any medicinal virtues, I believe. HELEN E. WATNEY.

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Fig. 70. Feet of Parasite."

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also shown, × 160. The upper part of the figure gives the connection with the cephalic segment. Fig. 69 represents one of the two (pygidia ?) x 160. The surface next the eye (ventral) is in focus the indistinct hexagonal areolation belonging to the dorsal side of the organ. The minute dots represented give the object a delicate beauty of aspect, very difficult to reproduce in a drawing.

Fig. 70 gives a representation of two of the feet, (1) in which the unci are well developed, and the pulvilli comparatively small, belonging to the first pair of legs; (2) which shows the pulvilli much more conspicuously, the unci being very small, appertaining to the third pair. The feet are drawn to the same scale as fig. 69. Fig. 71 shows the entire insect x 40 diameters, mounted in balsam. It is hoped that the description and drawings may lead to the identification of this possible stranger. CHARLES E. BURTON.

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dent, not being then aware that many species appear to remain all the winter in a dormant state of hybernation; nor had I until very lately heard of any grain-storing European ant. At a late meeting of the Entomological Society of London, a communication was read from a gentleman at Nismes, South France, recording the habit of some ants in storing grain, seeds, &c., near that place. To prove it, he had scattered some hempseed near, and they had been carried into the nest, and shortly afterwards he discovered their husks outside. I think he added that in some cases, before storing, the germs had been bitten out, which would argue great foresight on the part of these intelligent little creatures; but be this as it may, the fact of storing was fully proved.

At our last meeting there was a further note from the same gentleman from Capri, still farther south, where he had observed similar habits in ants.

But my notes carry me to the far East, where I often watched this most interesting class of insects, and briefly recorded my observations, unfortunately cut short by illness, and the necessity of return to Europe, which must be my apology for their want of completeness.

But before transcribing, I would remind my general reader that all ants may be seen carrying off food to their nests for present consumption, and that this food consists of a great variety of sub

stances. This is disposed of inside the said nest, being often masticated and the juice extracted by the workers, and then given in an inspissated form from their mouths to the young grubs, which are in general tended by their nurses with the greatest care. It is indeed very curious to watch this feeding process; but to proceed.

Under date Nov. 7th, 1866, I find in my natural history note-book as follows:- Mainpuri. This morning as I was walking across the "Oosur," or waste plain, where it was very sandy, being cut into small ravines, and clothed only bere and there with fine grass disposed in clumps, thus forming little hillocks of sand blown by the wind, and arrested in its course by the grass, I came across a long line of ants, travelling four deep, some coming empty, and others laden each with one grass-seed on their way home.

I followed up the procession to the nest, which was subterranean, and at the mouth of which on the level plain there was no trace of elevation caused by the soil brought up from below, owing to the habit of these ants of taking each grain of sand to some distance along their road, and depositing it on one side or the other.

There may have been five or six entrances to the nest, in and out of which a prodigious number of ants were passing, the species of which has been described by Dr. Jerdon. They were of a medium size, shortish bodies, and of a reddish-brown colour, -Podomyrma rufo-nigra, Jerdon. Around the mouth of the nest, forming a circle of perhaps eighteen inches in diameter, was a space beaten flat, and kept clear by these said ants, from which radiated in every direction thirteen roads, each about four inches in width for about 30 to 40 yards, when they branched off and became narrower, being ultimately lost amongst the grass roots. These paths were fairly straight; they did not cut through elevations, but went round them.

From a careful examination, it appeared that they had been cleared of all obstacles, such as small stones, twigs, &c., but that their smoothness resulted only from the tread of countless feet.

The bearers of burdens took the seeds into the nest, which I did not dig up, and certainly stored them there, after having prepared them, probably by the removal of a portion of the outer husk. Of these husks there were large collections near the entrances to the nest, all carefully set aside by the ants.

In times of famine, I am told, not only are the nests rifled of their grass-seed stores, but these heaps of apparent husks are collected and ground with other grain to eke out a subsistence.

This kind of grain has a name, " Jurroon," derived from "Jharna," to sweep, literally, sweepings. I much regret that I have not preserved specimens of this "Jurroon," for it is very unlikely that the ants

after taking it to their granary, should again throw it out, and yet, if grainless, what benefit could there be in eating it? The season of the year when I observed them (November) is the beginning of the cold weather, and no rain would probably fall (excepting a little at Christmas) till next May or June. Later on seed would be rare; and how the nest fares at a time when floods of water often pass over the plain I cannot conceive.

It is clear that some escape, and we know with what prodigious rapidity these colonies increase. But these jottings have been recorded merely to show how this species of ant store grain against a time of scarcity, and fully bear out the statement in the text with which I commenced this paper.

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consists of vitreous matter formed within the great volcanoes of the Miocene epoch; and the melted mass, slowly cooling, allowed the crystalline elements mixed with it to crystallize. According to Dana, pitchstone is composed of albite or oligoclose, rather than orthoclose, that is, it contains soda, or soda and lime, instead of potash: its chemical constituents are silica, alumina, iron lime, and soda. Porphyrine is an artificial production, and is introduced here as an illustration of the production of crystalline forms when molten vitreous matter is allowed to cool slowly. This substance is of a beautiful crimson colour, and is said to be manufactured only in Russia, where it is used for mosaic-work: its composition is asserted to be a secret. As a microscopic object, it appears to be little known, probably owing to its

Fig. 73. Section of Porphyrine. scarcity: under the binocular, I know of few objects that can compete with it. The beautiful fern-like crystals embedded in the transparent base would alone interest the observer; but, in addition to this elegant outline, the fern-fronds are of a beautiful crimson colour. The most effective way of viewing them is with a two-thirds objective, and Lieberkühn. Many very beautiful crystalline forms, adapted for microscopic observation, may be produced by means of the blowpipe. The following is the plan recommended by Mr. Sorby, F.R.S.:-A small quantity of borax is mixed with some mineral salt or oxide, and a little of it placed in a small platinum ring of about one-eighth inch diameter, and then fused with the blowpipe. After fusing, the bead is to be kept for some little time at a dull red heat; when cool, the ring containing the bead may be cut off, and the whole mounted in Canada balsam. The author advises the use of a four-tenths objective for the examination of the crystals. The following salts and oxides produce beautiful crystalline forms:-borate of magnesia,

zirconia, theolite (native tungstate of lime), molybdate of strontia, apatite, native phosphate of lime. A full description and figures of the erystals will be found in vol. i. of the Monthly Microscopical Journal, p. 347.

NEW MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. - We have received the first number of a new journal of natural history and microscopy, published in Chicago, under the name of The Lens. The principal paper in it, however, is taken from the Monthly Microscopical Journal-illustrations as well. A little leniency may be shown to this common transatlantic fault, on account of the great fire. We congratulate the editors on so soon recovering the loss then inflicted.

ON STAINING TISSUES.-It is desirable to stain sections of all soft tissues, whether from healthy or diseased specimens. First, because it enables us more accurately to distinguish germinal or nuclear matter from formed material, or tissue proper, by their differences in receptivity of colour; and secondly, because it brings into relief all constituents of soft tissue, and therefore renders their study easier and more satisfactory. The staining material which aids me most, and therefore suits me best, is the alkaline solution of carmine made after Beales's formula. The sections should be placed in the carmine solution as soon as they are made, and they should be made as soon as possible. No positive rules can be laid down as to the precise time required for the completion of the staining process. It will vary, within certain limits, according to the character of the tissue and alkalinity of the solution. In regard to this latter point, I may properly say that the carmine solution should neither be neutral nor intensely alkaline: in the former case, all portions of the tissue will probably be stained alike; in the latter case, much of the younger or softer portion of the formed material surrounding the germinal matter will be destroyed by the excess of alkali. I generally permit my own sections to remain in carmine for three or four hours. Having completed the staining process, the sections should next be immersed in a mixture composed of Price's or Sarg's glycerine and distilled water, aa 3iv., acetic acid gtt. xx. This answers the double purpose of rendering the so-called nuclei (germinal matter, bioplast) sharp and clear, and of commencing the process of impregnating with strong glycerine; it will also remove the superfluous carmine. After being soaked in the glycerine and! water mixture for from twelve to twenty-four hours they should be transferred to the following mixture: purest and strongest glycerine, 3i.; pure acetic acid, gtt. v. They should be allowed to remain in this mixture until they are fully saturated therewith. This will take from two days to as many weeks. -J. N. Danforth, M.D., in the "Lens."

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