HARDWICKE'S SC lEN CE-GOS S IP. 



199 



the workmen their work, whilst the public-house 

 close by gets emptied of its company through the 

 fire-bark, and all help to swell the crowd which 

 assembles, and very oft( u impedes the actions of the 

 firemen at a fire. On the men's return from a fire, 

 it is usual, if they are wet or have bad very arduous 

 duty to perform, to give them refreshments. 



Our Jim asks for his refreshments by putting out 

 his tongue and licking his lips night or day. Jim is 

 always served out with his refreshment?, if the men 

 have theirs ; but sometimes he takes pains to let us 

 know that he is entitled to them whatever we may 

 think about the matter, and he is generally success- 

 ful in his application. His refreshments finished, 

 he next informs us that he wants his bath; that 

 completed, he retires to the office to rest himself and 

 watch for the next turn-out, whether it be to a 

 mill, warehouse, or cottage, it is all the same 

 to him. 



Our Jim is now turned twelve years of age. 

 He is nearly blind ; his whiskers are grey, and 

 although he has met with many accidents, and 

 upon his body there are many honourable scars, 

 still he is very active. His friends, the firemen, 

 are proud of their old dog, and well they may be, 

 for many a time have they been some little dis- 

 tance from the station, and by his fire- bark they 

 have received timely notice that has enabled them 

 to be in time to attend with the engine, from 

 which, had it not been for him, they would have 

 been absent. A. Tozee. 



Chief Fire Station, Manchester. 



SUDDEN APPEARANCES OF PLANTS. 



■]%/rR. J. E. ROBSON has called attention 

 i*i- (Science-Gossip, No. 112, p. 91) to the 

 curious statement of Macaulaythat the next sum- 

 mer after the battle of Landen, in the Netherlands, 

 millions of ijoppies, "fertilized by twenty thousand 

 corpses," covered the ground on which the battle 

 had been fought. I think the ciicumstauce may be 

 accounted for without taking up the poetical idea 

 that " the earth was disclosing her blood and re- 

 fusing to cover ber blain." Of course after the 

 battle these "twenty thousand corpses" were all 

 buried, and the soil must have been turned up to a 

 great extent. In all probability the fight took 

 place among corn-fields, where poppies had long 

 flourished among the corn, and their seeds left in 

 the ground were greatly dispersed in the turning up 

 of the soil to bury tlie slaughtered combatants. The 

 spilling of the blood of the suldiers would not have 

 been a sufficient cause for the appearance of the 

 poppies -unless the ground had been disturlied. No 

 doubt the poppy that thus presented itself was the 

 common corn-poppy, Papaver rhccas. 

 An appearance analogous to this, though without 



the battle, came under my view a few years since 

 when the Severn Yallcy Railway was constructed. 

 Between Stourport and Bewdley, Worcestershire, 

 the line passed through arable fields upon a sandy 

 soil, and partly in cutting. The year after the 

 ground was thus excavated, the mass of scarlet 

 poppies (P. rh(cas) that lined the embankment for 

 miles was wonderful to behold, the seeds of poppies 

 that had probably rema'ned dormant for some years 

 having been widely thrown about by the operations 

 of the navigators, and urged into vitality. Yet 

 strange to say, though doubtless most of these 

 poppies produced seeds, yet this profusion, that 

 astonished the eye at the time, has not been main- 

 tained. 



It appears to be a law of Nature, that wherever 

 the ground is freshly turned up and not planted by 

 man, vegetation of some kind shall take im- 

 mediate possession of the vacant space ; and if seeds 

 should be there lying dormant, they start up into 

 life with meteor-like rapidity. A few years since 

 the tenant of some meadows by the side of the river 

 Teme at Powick, three miles from Worcester, threw 

 up an embankment to keep out the water of the 

 river when freshes occurred. The next year I was 

 surprised to see the new enibaukment covered by a 

 most profuse growth of Cardamine impatiens all 

 along it. But what peihaps is most remarkable is, 

 that these armies of plants thus suddenly appearing 

 are unable to maintain themselves and keep their 

 position, but gradually disappear. Not a single 

 plant of the Cardamine impatiens enn now be seen 

 on the embankment or on the river-side near it. 



I noticed not long since the clearing away of a 

 hedge by the road-side near Worcester, where only 

 a few of the common "jack-by-the-hedge" {Alliaria 

 officinalis) usually presented themselves, that the 

 next season the vhole line of the hedge where the 

 soil had been upturned, bristled with hundreds of 

 the plant from end to end, forming a brilliant white 

 line when in flower. But this profusion was only 

 of one year's duration. 



In like manner it has been a matter of observa- 

 tion dating at least as far back as White of Sel- 

 borne's time, that when underwood is cut down in 

 coppices, the next season the ground open to the 

 influence of the sun produces a crowd of plants that 

 in the dense shade of the woodland were unable to 

 appear, 'i'he local orchid Epipactis endfolia (sword- 

 leaved helleboriiie), grows in Wyre Forest, scattered 

 about, though rather rarely in most years. But I 

 have noticed, when the underwood, after seven 

 years' growth, has been cut down, that the following 

 year the helleborine springs up in great quantities, 

 adorning the forest glades and rides that have been 

 thus exposed to light and air ; but as the underwood 

 grows up again the orchis disappears, not to be 

 found again in any quantity until the next fall of 

 underwood comes round. 



