HARDWICKE'S SCIEN CE-GOSSIP. 



113 



spiders ; but it is complete only to the date of Mr, 

 Blackwall's work, " Spiders of Great Britain and 

 Ireland," since the publication of which the number 

 of known indigenous species has increased by nearly 

 one half. The systematic arrangement of Mr. 

 Blackwall has not been adopted in this list, appear- 

 ing, as it did, to be too artificial and based on in- 

 sufficient (though in :some respects convenient) cha- 

 racters, and, moreover, never to have found favour 

 with other araneologists. The present arrangement 

 (though it has no pretensions to finality) is the result 

 of a long and tolerably careful study of spiders from 

 many and widely distant regions of the world. It 

 begins at the opposite end to that where Dr. Thorell 

 and Dr. Koch begin their systematic arrangements ; 

 but it is, in the main, not very discordant with that 

 of the former of these authors, as put forth in his 

 valuable work "On the Genera of European Spiders," 

 a work to which Mr. Cambridge is indebted for 

 many most valuable hints on the classification of the 

 Araneidea. 



Anatomy of the Menobranchus.— At a recent 

 meeting of the Zoological Society, Professor Hux- 

 ley read a memoir upon the structure of the skull 

 and of the heart of Menohranchiis lateralis, describ- 

 ing the structure of the bony skull in the osteo- 

 cranium, and giving a full account of the primordial 

 skull or chondro-cranium, which has not hitherto 

 been noticed. The chondro-cranium was compared 

 with that of Proteus, and that of larval frogs and 

 tritons, and its essentially embryonic character was 

 indicated. The chondro-cranium was further sliown 

 to be formed by the coalescence of three distinct 

 classes of elements which were termed parachodral, 

 pleural, and paraneural. The heart was described, 

 and the septum of the auricles was shown to be an 

 open net-work allowing of free communication 

 between the right and left auricular chambers. The 

 structure of the fruncus arteriosus was compared 

 with that observed in other Amphibians. 



Economic Value of Alligators.— Mr. J. G. 

 Mitchell states in the last number of the Zoologist, 

 that those large animals the Alligators, which are 

 so abundant in the rivers of tropical America, are 

 now being utilized. Large bales of their skins are 

 being imported into France and Hamburg for the 

 manufacture of large over-all boots. 



A Male Nurse. — The Philadelphia Medical 

 Times says that the Lepus Bairdii is a peculiar 

 species of rabbit which is found in the mountains 

 near the three Tetons of Wyoming and the heads of 

 the Snake River and the Missouri. One of its 

 peculiarities is the habit which the males have of 

 suckling the young. Numerous specimens of this 

 sex were obtained by the naturalists of Hayden's 

 geological survey of 1872, with well-developed teats 

 and mammary glands filled with milk. 



BOTANY. 



How to Skeletonize.— The v/ay to prepare 

 skeleton leaves is to lay them in rain-water for 

 two or three months, and let the leaves be a good 

 size. After they have been in the water the proper 

 time, take them out gently, for fear you split them, 

 and put them into some clean water. Then put 

 the leaves one by one on to a card or the palm of 

 your hand, and with a very soft and clean camel- 

 hair brush or the tip of your finger, dab the leaf 

 gently until all the green part comes off. After- 

 wards put a small teaspoonful of chloride of lime 

 into about half a pint of cold water, and then leave 

 the skeletons in the lime and water until they become 

 very nearly white ; then take them out very care- 

 fully with a card, and lay them on a clean piece of 

 blotting-paper in the sun to dry. In preparing the 

 poppy-heads you require to be still more careful 

 than with the leaves. They must have separate 

 water from the leaves, and must be covered up 

 and not have a bruise in them. When they 

 have been soaked long enough, you must take them 

 out by the stalk, and with a small pair of pincers 

 you must take all off the outside until you come to 

 the skeleton, and then make a little hole up by the 

 crown and take the inside out little by little, so that 

 you cannot break the skeleton in doing so. The 

 bleaching process is exactly the same as bleaching 

 the skeleton leaves. — M. L. W. 



Eryngium maritimum (Sea Holly) a Seaside 

 Plant. — In considering what will best bear the 

 cutting winds and saline vapour of the seaside, it 

 should be borne in mind that there are certain her- 

 baceous and ornamental plants as well as shrubs 

 which come under the above description; for in- 

 stance the Thrift {Armeria maritima) is common as 

 a small border plant ; it grows abundantly near 

 Brighton on the shore shingle by the road to Shore- 

 ham which it partly covers. The Eryngium mari- 

 timum, an umbelliferous plant, though seldom culti- 

 vated, is an herbaceous evergreen with pretty 

 hemispherical blue flowers ; it is indigenous on seji 

 sands on the coasts of England and elsewhere ; it 

 grows in great abundance on the sands at Ostend^ 

 where I was much struck with its beauty ; it is a 

 foot and a half high, with leaves of a glaucous hue, 

 very stiff and prickly, like the holly-leaf, and pro- 

 bably for that reason not a favourite in gardens. Its 

 extensively creeping roots were formerly converted 

 into sweetmeats, and candied " Eringo root " is 

 still to be obtained in some places : it formed in 

 Shakespear's time the "kissing comfits" of Falstafl' : 

 Linnaeus says the tops are eaten like asparagus in 

 Sweden. Its medicinal powers, which were at one 

 time highly extolled, are now in no repute. The 

 leaves and flowers, being remarkably strong and 

 durable, are frequently employed as fit subjects for 



