HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



245 



would be fully three feet six iuches high through 

 the centre, and was just the shape of a well-formed 

 apple-pudding. 



It is curious to note how well the colour of the 

 material used for the nest and the general rubbish 

 on the ground in a wood assimilate with the dusky 

 black and tawny red of the ants ; those hills made 

 of the leaf-sheaths of the beech are almost exactly 

 the colour of the ants. A large nest of the sort I 

 saw must be the work of more than one year, 

 though exactly how long they are constructing such 

 a nest I cannot say. The ants are very pertinacious 

 in the way they carry their runs right across a road 

 in spite of the trafiic,,which must destroy a good 

 many. One small nest, by the side of a pathway, 

 which I disturbed, I found had been quite deserted, 

 and the ants were going between it and another 

 small temporary nest to a new spot. I watched 

 them carrying eggs, pupse, and ants along during 

 the few hours of fine weather. The ants that were 

 being carried were held under the carrier upside 

 down in their jaws, and were folded together very 

 compactly. They shifted their quarters again from 

 this new nest, apparently not satisfied with the 

 situation. There appeared to me to be a vast lot of 

 useless labour in their proceedings. One ant would 

 carry back a pupa that another had just carefully 

 brought out of the nest, and two would get hold of 

 opposite ends of the same bit of stick, and pull in 

 opposite directions. They did not carry away any 

 of the materials of the deserted nest, but got fresh 

 ones each time. 



Fig. I6s. ho-wer Oolite (Gryphea virgula). 



These ants are rather uncertain in their distribu- 

 tion. I never met with any while in South Devon. 

 They do not seem confined to any particular soil, as 

 they are common on the sand at Weybridge, in 

 Surrey, on chalk and limestone, and on granite at 

 Linton, in North Devon. 



Another conspicuous insect occurring at Bussage 

 was the Great Saw-fly (Urocerus gigas). I saw 

 several specimens ; one settled on my coat while 

 sketching — I suppose attracted by the smell of the 

 turpentine I was using. Their frequency was no 

 doubt owing to the larch woods in Toadmoor 

 Valley, on the timber of which the larviB feed. 



The present year has, I think, been a very bad 

 one for lepidoptcra, from the coldness and rain, at 

 any rate in the west ; so I had not a fair oppor- 

 tunity of judging of the lepidoptera of the district ; 

 but certainly there was no great abundance of even 

 common species, except the Cinnabar Moth [Calli- 

 morpha Jacobcea:), which was quite a pest, and dur- 



ing August every road, wall, and walk abounded 

 with its yellow and black ringed caterpillars, which 

 in many places had eaten up every scrap of ragwort 

 and groundsel, and were rapidly crawling about 

 for more food. They were so numerous that they 

 must have done good service in destroying these 

 two weeds they feed on. One of the " footman " 

 moths, called the "Muslin" {Niidaria miindana), 

 came to light very freely, and must have been very 

 plentiful there. The scarce Magpie ]\Ioth {Ahraxns 

 ulmata) also abounded in the district. 



Fig. 169. Great Saw-fly (tArocecMsg'ig'us). 



MoLLUSCA.— The land and fresh-water mollusca 

 of the district did not strike me as being very rich 

 in species, although the individuals were plentiful. 

 Planorhis alius and P. nitidus occurred in the 

 large pond at the bottom of the valley ; but I could 

 find no Limnea pereger there. There were traces of 

 Anodonta cygnea in the shape of dead and broken 

 shells. The most interesting species to me was 

 Pupa jimiperii, which I found amongst loose stones 

 on an old pasture slope, in company with Bulmus 

 oJjscurus. 



Zoology. — Toadsmoor Valley gets its name from 

 the number of frogs and toads that swarm there. 

 Oa a warm damp night it is hardly possible to 

 avoid treading on them. It is easy to see how a 

 story of a toad in rock might occur here, as they 

 retire to all sorts of crevices in the oolite, whicli is 

 very damp, and would very likely turn up in 

 quarrying. 



At the end of June, when I first went there, all 

 the young frogs, which were blackish and about 

 three-quarters of an inch long, were leaving the 

 pond at the bottom of the valley, and beginning 

 their ascent of the hills. There were swarms of 

 them, and on the damp days, of which we had so 

 many, they went steadily hopping over the path and 

 up into the woods. They continued doing this all 

 the mouth. One lot I noticed in the afternoon 



