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ment obtained from Mr. Colman's artesian well, at Carrow, Norwich.

The following extract from a paper on the process of silicification of animals, read before the Geological Association last year, by Mr. H. M. Johnson, F.G.S., may perhaps be of interest. The author points out "how a crop of sponges invested with their gelatinous flesh or sarcode, and living at the bottom of a deep ocean, were suddenly buried in a thick stratum of white mud, consisting of the minute shells of foraminifera; that they then died, and that while in the process of decomposition this interchange of materials took place; the nascent carbonic acid parting with its carbon in exchange for the silica of the silicate of soda which sea-water is known to contain."

To illustrate the power possessed by decomposing organic matter he produced two tadpoles, or rather one and the remains of a second. The first had been placed in a solution of silica, and after the lapse of a few hours was submitted to the action of nitric acid, without any apparent injury: the other, which had not been submitted to the silicifying process before being placed in the nitric acid, was instantly destroyed, the only trace of it being a little brown cloud floating in the acid.

The discoveries made in the dredging expeditions of the Porcupine and the Norna have given an impetus to the study of the sponge forms, and although we may not have the opportunity of adding new genera or species, all of us who possess a microscope can study the life history of the common fresh-water sponge, Spongilla fluviatilis. It may be found in almost every pond or small stream, and a few hours' study of a fragment of a living sponge will give the observer a better idea of that marvellous substance we call sarcode or protoplasm, than any lecture or paper can ever hope to do.Trans. Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Soc., 1872.

NOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ROTTERDAM AND GHENT.

THE THE STORK.-I saw nothing of this bird in Rotterdam itself; perhaps the place was too busy for it. At Delfshaven, a village near the town, a party of storks had taken up their abode. There were seven of them; I think they were the two old birds and five young ones. The nest was on a low brick chimney, right in the village; the nest was much larger than the chimney, and projected all round. When I first saw them, on the 15th of July, they were all full-grown; they hovered and wheeled about at a great height in the air, as if practising for their departure southward, which took place about the end of the month. The birds seemed very tame, and swooped down between the

houses quite fearlessly. Their resting-place was the ridge of the church roof, where they stood on one leg, in the sun, cleaning their feathers. In the fish-market at the Hague there were some tame storks that fed on the refuse from the fish. They did not seem in very good condition; perhaps the fact of their not migrating did not agree with them.

Rude figures of this bird constantly occur in bits of wood carving over doorways, &c., or cut in stone on the houses in Rotterdam, while nearly all the country cottages have a curious sort of iron dome-shaped frame over their chimneys, which are supposed to induce the storks to build. The latter are believed to bring good luck with them. The Heron, as would be expected, was very plentiful, both in Holland and Belgium, and birds in general were very abundant about Rotterdam; quite different from France in this respect. I was told by a naturalist that plovers differed slightly in plumage from English

ones.

Amongst the fresh-water Mollusca, the Unionide hold an important place. The commonest species about Rotterdam was Unio pictorum. The shells were longer and thinner than my Thames specimens. I noticed quantities of rotten shells of this species and Anodonta cygnea, in the sandy loam that had been cut for a new canal. There were also large tree-trunks lying in the soil, which is quite destitute of stones. In a heap of gravel, which, I was told, had been brought down from the Rhine, there were a number of Unio littoralis. I had never met with it in a living state before, although it occurred in a fossil state, associated with recent land and fresh-water shells, Cyrena fluminalis, and elephant remains, at Erith, where I got fossil specimens. Anodonta cygnea was common enough, but I did not see any large specimens ; those from the canal at the Hague were small, ventricose, and ill-formed; perhaps the sandy bottom in most of the canals is unfavourable to the species. Dreissena polymorpha was very plentiful in the river Maas. About Rotterdam the water is quite fresh, although rising and falling with the tide. The sandy soil on which the town is built is full of dead shells in places, of fresh-water species, D. polymorpha amongst them.

The sea mussel (Mytilus edulis) is very much eaten in Holland and Belgium. In Ghent it was served up as a delicacy at dinner. In the museum there is a picture by Albert Cuyp, at Rotterdam, of a blacksmith leaving his forge to come out and eat mussels, with a group round him, just such as you see in the back part of Rotterdam at present round a mussel-cart.

The Goat-moth (Cossus ligniperda) infested the endless rows of pollard willows along the roads and dykes. The perfect insect was over; but there were lots of empty pupa-cases sticking out. One of these moth-infected trees was the centre of

A MYCOLOGICAL RAMBLE.

attraction for a number of large Tortoise-shells (Vanessa polychloros) and other insects. On the

sand-hills near Schevening I saw a Queen of Spain A LATE number of SCIENCE-GOSSIP and the

fritillary (Argyrus lathonia), but searched in vain for Pieris Daplidii and Colias hyale, which were so common in Brittany. The flora of these sandhills was different from both those of Brittany and the English ones. I have seen amongst the flowers Saponaria officinalis, the Soapwort," which was very conspicuous.

The Water Villarsia (Villarsia nymphæoides) was very plentiful in the smaller ditches, and the Marsh Sow-thistle (Sonchus palustris), also the flowering rush (Butomus umbellatus) flourished everywhere.

In the neighbourhood of Ghent, in Belgium, the Gipsy-moth (Liparis dispar) was so abundant as to be quite a feature in the natural history of the district. In some places the roadside pollard poplars were inhabited by the female moth, cocoons, larvæ, and eggs, all at the same time, while the male insect flitted up and down with the same sort of zigzag, rapid flight as the Vapourer moth, in the sunshine. As far as flight was concerned, it seemed to me the female Gipsy-moth would have done just as well without wings, for I never saw any of them move. They clung to the bark with great tenacity, and after laying their eggs, remained resting on the trunks till they died and fell off, or the rain washed them down. The females varied a good deal in size and colour. The eggs are not at all concealed, as the colour of the down with which they are covered seldom matched the tint or texture of the bark on which they were placed: they appeared to prefer the south side of the tree-trunk. The slight cocoons were spun on the rough bark, sometimes one or two over the other. My observations dated from the 4th of August.

A friend of mine, residing in Antwerp, told me he was summoned by the civil authorities to show why he had not killed the caterpillars in his garden, and he found there was a law compelling every one to kill the caterpillars on his premises. Those of the Gipsy-moth must afford them considerable trouble, from their numbers. The Swallow-tail (Papilio machaon) was to be had in the cloverfields about Ghent. Those I saw were in good condition, and belonged to a second brood. I took some once about the same date at Horning Fen, in Norfolk.

There was an interesting section of the sandy strata on which the town is built, under the fort, where some excavations had been made. As far as I could tell, they appeared to be marine Tertiary, lower Eocene; they contained a good many fossils, a species of Ostrea, a large Cardium, a Solarium, and a number of shark's teeth and fish-remains. I should say the spot would be a profitable one to a geologist; it is close to the town.

HARRY LESLIE.

propitious weather induced me a few days ago to revisit a woodland spot about two miles off, which during the years 1854-9 I used very frequently to explore for fungi. I was then alone, but this time I had with me five young companions, some of them keen observers and collectors, and all of them well able to attest the delight of a successful mycological ramble. Ours lasted about two hours and a half, in the afternoon. A few only of our findings can be mentioned, but these may suffice to show the variety of beautiful and interesting fungi obtainable during a short autumn walk in a good locality.

Amongst the Agarics the Amanita were not so numerous as we had anticipated. 4. rufescens abounded and was in great perfection. A. phalloides and A. mappa were found, but not satisfactorily exhibiting the delicate and finished structure proper to this royal family amongst the fungi. Tricholoma rutilans, with its pileus like the sunny side of an American peach, was worthy of itself. Clitocybe infundibuliformis showed a chalice neater than the finest work in terra-cotta. A magnificent tuft of Pholiota aureus was descried far enough off to give scope for a good race. A fine Psalliota, tall and large, with bright yellow pileus and base, was received with the remark-"it is not in our books," though I have seen it figured somewhere very recently. Paxillus involutus was, of course, not rare, and P. panuoides, very like a golden Chantarelle, grew where it did in 1858, on the spot from which it was sent to be identified by the Rev. M. T. Berkeley. I must not attempt to mention my old favourites the Mycenæ, graceful as ever, though many familiar forms were absent. The Boleti, Peziza, and Sphæria, were not very numerously represented; possibly some of the finest species had passed away. The Polypori, however, were in grand condition. The common P. squamosus has, I think, seldom been seen to greater advantage. P. intybaceus was hailed, as well it might be, with great delight, its many confluent stems looking as if sculptured in Bath stone. P. betulinus was first descried growing on a broken branch of a birch-tree, more than 20 feet from the ground. The necessity for a climb was happily averted by the discovery on the ground of a portion of the broken branch on which were growing four beautiful specimens. Some sacrilegious hand or foot had made sad havoc with a noble growth of P. giganteus, which was still beautiful even in its ruin. Several smaller specics occurred; amongst them P. picipes and P. adustus. The species of Stereum were only just beginning their winter growth. The specimens of Fistulina were Protean in shape, colour, and size. The Clavaria yielded the coral-like C. rugosa, and flaming

tufts of C. inæqualis, almost equalled in size and surpassed in colour by Calocera viscosa. These formed, numerically, a small proportion of the fungi collected in a locality where lichens are almost absent, mosses not plentiful, and scaleworts are becoming scarce, owing, as I believe, to the impurity of the atmosphere, and where almost the only flowering plants of much botanical interest are Scutellaria minor and two species of Potamogeton.

Just as in our native Entomology, the study of the Hymenoptera, when once fairly entered upon, affords more of biological interest than the study of all the other orders of insects put together; so I believe it to be with Mycology, as compared with other departments of Botany.

HENRY H. HIGGINS.

profusion of both the species of Vaccinium above mentioned.

Even at the first glance it would require a stretch of credulity to suppose, as has been supposed, that a plant with a large sweet black berry, and a flower globular like the glass shades used to cover gas jets, can be a variety of the cowberry, with its smaller crimson acerb berry, and divided patulous flower. We should be rather disposed to appropriate it to the bilberry; but thence we should be deterred, prima facie, by its non-deciduous leaves, and rounded twigs, so very different from the bilberry's.

THE

A CURIOUS BRITISH PLANT.

HE little plant, of which the accompanying figures are illustrations, appears to the writer to possess considerable interest, and to be undoubtedly a cross or hybrid (and to some extent a fertile one) between the Bilberry or Whortleberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) and the Cowberry or Red Whortleberry (V. vitis-idea), though it is but candid to observe that this last point was doubted by several Fellows of the Linnean Society, at one of the meetings of which it was lately exhibited. The following more particular description will, we think, be sufficient to convince any botanist that the plant can neither be considered as V. myrtillus nor V. vitis-idea, but must be a cross between the two.

A large tussuck or clump of the plant was first noticed a few years back in a rather interesting locality in Staffordshire, mentioned in the "Origin of Species," ""** as an instance where the fencing and introduction of one plant (the Scotch fir) has produced a remarkable change in a portion of a large and barren heath, which had never before been touched by the hand of man-a change in the relative proportion of the heath plants, in the relative number of other flowering plants, or an excess of them in the inclosed part of the heatlı, and the advent in it of several insectivorous birds, different from those on the still wild moor. We may ourselves notice the Sirex gigas and S. juvencus amongst insects as having become frequent in the wooded part. We do not suppose, however, that this change of vegetation has anything to do with the production of the plant in question, and need only add here that all around the supposed hybrid, in society and even in contact with it, is a

* 1859, p. 71.

The hills were planted by Mr. Wedgwood, the eminent potter, and are called the Maer and Camp Hills, the latter name from several Saxon encampments and mounds situated on their summits.

Fig. 174. Hybrid Bilberry.

To proceed with the description of our plant, the leaves are coriaceous or thick like those of the cowberry or box, not thin and membranous as in the bilberry, though they are well serrated, like those of the latter plant; neither are they so blunt and

obovate as those of the cowberry, and have only a slight trace of the glandular dots so conspicuous on their under surface; netherare their margins revolute. The berries are occasionally scattered and axillary, as in the bilberry, but chiefly terminal, as in the cowberry, though then solitary or few in number, unlike what they are in the clusters of the latter; on this account called bunch-berry here. The shape of the corolla has already been referred to as exactly that of the bilberry's, but white and transparent, or tinged with pink, not red. The calyx is also leafy, and divided as in the cowberry. The curious stamens are shaped as in Vaccinium generally, being like two slender flasks joined together and opening at the tip of the necks; they agree with the bilberry in having the side-horns or processes, but smaller : these are absent in the cowberry; on the other hand, they have the curious hairs on the filaments,

Fig. 175. Flowers and Leaves of Hybrid Bilberry.

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not seen in the bilberry. The berries are black and large, as in the bilberry, but without its blue bloom; the teeth of the calyx remain at their summits. The time of flowering agrees with the bilberry, being earlier than that of the cowberry, and so with the fruit; but it must be observed that both the bilberry and the hybrid flower or fruit to a less extent almost the whole year round, which is less the case with the cowberry, it fruiting in August. There are especially two crops of bilberries in the year; one about midsummer, the other late in autumn: for instance, we purchased them on October 27th of last year. To our taste the fruit of the bilberry is pleasant when cooked, and, we believe, little likely to disagree with the partaker; the cowberry differs but little in flavour from the scarcer and much dearer cranberry, for which it is sometimes sold to the unobservant.

The hybrid is handsomer in its foliage and less straggling than the cowberry. It flowers and fruits

much more scantily than either of its parents. The microscope shows that the grains of its pollen are generally shrunken, though a few present the plump tripartite form common in the genus. In such berries as were examined there were not more than from two to five apparently perfect seeds, whilst there were a dozen or more in the cowberry, and twice as many in the bilberry.

Such are the characters, pretty carefully observed, and faithfully described, which led the friend who first noticed the plant, and who forwarded it to me, as well as myself, to consider it to be a hybrid. In fact, no botanist could find good reasons for arranging it with either the bilberry or cowberry exclusive, the two sets of specific characters being so mixed.

An eminent observer, who was good enough to look at the plant, suggested that if it were a hybrid it would be found, most probably, to be barren; and the scanty flowers and berries, as well as the very few perfect seeds and the shrunken pollen, bear out the latter surmise to some extent. The wonder is, how it happens that our two common Vaccinia, growing both together in profusion on our hills, are not oftener crossed. Perhaps the somewhat dif ferent time of flowering may be one cause, and another the perfect shielding in most of these plants of the pistils from foreign pollen by the globular corolla. The use of the horns on the anthers of the bilberry, and the protrusion or not of the stigma from the corolla in heath plants are also subjects for thought or research.

Though plants growing in great profusion are apt to vary, yet we only know of one marked variation of the bilberry, and that in a spot two or three miles from the locality already mentioned. On one hillock, in the open glade of a fir wood, the bilberries are all (instead of their usual black colour with a fine bloom) of a transparent yellowish-white, a little mottled with pink. This, however, constitutes a very different case from the previous one. R. GARNER, F.L.S.

ON THE ABUNDANCE OF VANESSA ANTIOPA IN 1872.

THE sudden appearance in considerable numbers

of that rare butterfly, the Camberwell Beauty (Vanessa Antiopa) throughout the east and southeast of England, and more sparingly throughout the country, seems to call for some special notice.

This species is common in most parts of the Continent of Europe, extending as far north as Lapland, and seems to be pretty constant in its numbers; but the great uncertainty about its appearance in this country has been noticed for a long period.

* D. Ball, Esq., F.R.C.S.

Moses Harris, writing in 1775, does not speak of it as any rarity; but Berkenhaut, in 1789, writes," very rare in this kingdom." In 1793 it received the name of "The Grand Surprise" from Harris and the Society of Aurelians (as entomologists were then called), of which he was a member, on account of its sudden appearance in extraordinary numbers. Donovan (1794) states that there have been several instances in mild seasons of its being as common as the Peacocks and [Admirals (Vanessa Io and Atalanta), and that in 1793 it was as plentiful in some places as the common garden whites usually are near London. Curtis, in his "British Entomology," says that a few were taken in Suffolk in 1819, and that Mr. Samouelle took one hybernated specimen the following spring, but that it had not been seen for many years before.

Fig. 176. Camberwell Beauty (Vanessa Antiopa).

Wood, in his "Index Entomologicus in 1839," records it as occurring in woods in Surrey on the oak, and also that a specimen had been taken near Norwich in May.

The year 1846 has been called the Antiopa year (a name which it can now hardly retain), from the numbers which were then seen and taken in many parts of the country. The next spring hybernated specimens were met with, but it then became as rare as ever. I am informed, however, that one specimen was seen at Easton, near Norwich, on July 31st, 1847, or 1848, by Mr. J. H. Gurney. I have no notices at hand of its occurrence during the next few years, but in 1856 one was seen in the spring in the Isle of Wight. In 1857 five were taken-one in Norfolk, two in Essex, one in Lancashire, and one in Northumberland, and a sixth was seen. In 1858 the same number were takentwo in Essex, one in Norfolk, and two in Lancashire; in 1859, two in Yorkshire; and in 1861, one near Coldstream. No more seem to be recorded till 1865, when one was taken at Tenterden and another seen at Ilfracombe. None were seen for the next two years, but in 1868 fourteen were noticed-four in Norfolk (two of which were taken

at Sparham), one at Ipswich, one at Chatteris, six near Cambridge, and one each at Tadcaster and Grundisburgh. Notwithstanding this unusual number, no hybernated specimen seems to have been noticed in the following spring, nor is any specimen recorded for that year; but in 1870 specimens occurred at Rochester, Cheltenham, and in Suffolk; and in 1871, one at Sevenoaks, and one seen at Buxton, near Norwich, on a bleeding alder-tree, by my friend Mr. F. P. Wheeler.

Of the grand appearance this season, the headquarters seem to be Norfolk, in which county at least fifty have been seen and thirty taken, and the remaining eastern counties have come in for a very large share. It is obvious that the numbers recorded are but a portion of what have been seen; for instance, the Editor of SCIENCE-GOSSIP was so

overwhelmed with notices that he could not find room for them (see page 234), but from the records published in the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, and Newman's Entomologist, sufficient statistics can be gathered to show in some degree the relative numbers. In Cambridgeshire at least twenty-five have been seen and many captured; Suffolk records from twenty to thirty; Essex over twenty; Kent twenty-three, and others seen; Yorkshire thirty; but Lincolnshire only five, a disparity which must surely arise from a want of observers.

The southern counties come nextSussex with four taken and others seen,

Surrey thirteen, Hants seventeen, and Berks two; and there seems to have been a good sprinkling over the central counties, as in Middlesex six are recorded, in Herts five and "several," in Hunts two, Bucks one, Leicestershire one, Derbyshire ten, Nottingham one, and Staffordshire four, and others seen. Even the North has made a good show-Durham four, Northumberland one, and eleven in different parts of Scotland. The district in which they have been rare is the western, there being only notices of three in Lancashire, one in Cheshire, three in Wales, and one in Somerset. Ireland does not appear to have furnished a single specimen.

In the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine for this month (October) is an able paper by Mr. Stainton on this subject, in which he adduces forcible arguments to prove that these insects are not bred in this country, but are only immigrants from Norway.

This view is powerfully supported by the comparison given above, of the numbers seen in different counties and districts, and also by the fact to which Mr. Stainton draws attention, that so many of the captures were made on the coast. Even the earliest recorded specimen this year, on July 26th, at Yar

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