HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



oil-globe causes a bulging of the equator and 

 corresponding flattening of the poles, like that 

 observed not only in the sun, but in all the planets. 

 Instead of a sphere, the oil-globe becomes a spheroid 

 of rotation. If now the movement is considerably 

 accelerated, the equatorial portion of the oil-globe 

 becomes detached, and surrounds the central sphere 

 of oil in the shape of a nearly circular ring, like 

 Saturn's ring-system. Finally, if the movement is 

 kept up for a sufficient length of time, the oil-ring 

 breaks into fragments, which revolve like satellites 

 about the oil-globe, and each of the satellites keeps up 

 for a time its own movement of rotation in the same 

 direction as the revolution of the ring. 



Now all the planets and all the satellites, so far as 

 observation extends, are flattened at their poles. All 

 revolve round the sun, from west to east, in the same 

 direction as the sun rotates on its own axis. All the 

 planets except Uranus, and probably Neptune, rotate 

 on their own axis from west to east in the same 

 direction as the sun. Of the exceptions more here- 

 after. So far as the rotation of satellites have been 

 observed, they follow the same direction as their 

 primaries. The orbital planes of all the planets are 

 nearly concentric, and nearly in a plane with the ecliptic 

 solar equator. Mercury has an inclination of about 

 seven degrees, which is the maximum exception. But, 

 on the other hand, the asteroids are much more 

 inclined, one of them — Pallas — rises above the ecliptic 

 or the plane of the solar equator as much as thirty- 

 four degrees, and the nebular hypothesis at present 

 has not furnished any explanations of this remarkable 

 exception. It may be stated generally that the orbital 

 planes of satellites are in or very near to the equatorial 

 plane of their primaries. The combined weight of 

 these coincidences, clearly explained by M. Plateau's 

 experiment, forms a most powerful, though not by any 

 means the sole, argument in favour of the nebular 



hypothesis. 



{To be continued.) 



NATURAL HISTORY NOTES FROM NEW 

 ZEALAND. 



SIR, may I offer you for a corner of Science- 

 Gossip the following notes from letters of my 

 brother, Robert Norgate Hawes, of Kohimarama, 

 Auckland, New Zealand? — I am, Sir, yours truly, 



S. P. Hawes. 

 30th January, 1887. — Mn Dickie and I have taken 

 some young goldfinches, and I have taken some 

 young starlings to send down to Owen to turn out at 

 Waverley, as there are none thereabout. Here they 

 are very plentiful, but I find it rather difficult to get 

 young ones, so next spring I must put up a few small 

 boxes on the gables of the house for them to build in. 

 I saw quite a colony of them building among the 

 rocks and stones in the side of a scoria pit near the 

 mount of which I have spoken, but I could not get at 



them except by being lowered down with a rope, and 

 I did not care to risk that, as many of the over- 

 hanging rocks looked as if they would fall at a touch. 



I hardly see a native bird here now, except a few 

 in the bush, or an occasional hawk or seagull, but the 

 imported ones are visible in all directions. 



27th January, 1889. — I have a lot of bees, twenty- 

 one large hives, most of which I must take next 

 month, and as several of them have over a hundred- 

 weight each of honey in them, that means some 

 work. 



Bess brought in the first ripe tomatoes yesterday, 

 one half eaten by the blackbirds, so I must put up 

 my little windmill and bell again. 



The mason bees or wasps here are a great nuisance, 

 coming into the house and stable, or any building, in 

 fact, and filling up any hole or crevice they can find 

 with clay and spiders ; first a little wall or division of 

 fine clay, then an egg, and next a mass of eight or 

 ten spiders, not house spiders, but green and yellow 

 ones from the grass and trees, some of which I never 

 see except in these nests, one especially having a little 

 bright round spot (o, so large) on its back, as bright 

 as polished nickel plate. None of these spiders are 

 dead, but they are torpid, and so keep till wanted for 

 use by the larvae of the wasp. In each nest there are 

 six, or perhaps eight or ten cells, one after another. 

 If we leave a coat or waterproof, or any article of 

 dress hanging up for a few days, they are sure to 

 build in the folds of it. Just now I hear one or two 

 about the top of the curtains. 



The following is from my other brother : — 



Waverley, Wanganui, N.Z. 1st April, 1889. — It 

 has just struck me that in one of your letters, you sent 

 a clipping about cuckoos, in which a would-be wise 

 man ridiculed the idea of a young cuckoo turning 

 other young birds out of the nest. All I can say is, 

 that I have seen it done over and over again, when I 

 had put cuckoo's eggs into small birds' nests in the 

 garden at Hayes (Slinfold). In one case, in a hedge- 

 sparrow's nest by the bee-house, I replaced a young 

 hedge-sparrow so persistently that the cuckoo left it 

 alone after the third day or so. This wiseacre calls it 

 an exploded superstition. The chances are he never 

 saw a young cuckoo in its nest in his life. 



Owen Hawes. 



(I think I saw the young cuckoo in the hedge- 

 sparrow's nest in the bee-garden.) 



S. P. H. 



Ranunculus lingua. — Hooker describes this 

 variety as having lanceolate, sessile leaves, and large 

 flowers. Has any one noticed a variety which I have 

 collected in this neighbourhood, having many of the 

 characters of R. ophioglossifolius, viz. the lower leaves 

 long stalked, ovate, upper ones with shorter 

 petioles, lanceolate, and the flowers rather smaller 

 than R. acris ? — W. Siddiscombe, Plumstead. 



B 2 



