HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



33 



meat likewise about the stone is of a gallant red 

 colour. These kinds of peaches are very like to 

 wine in flavour, and therefore marvellous pleasant." 

 Observation shows that the nectarine is never found 

 wild, nor does it naturalize itself beyond our gardens. 

 It is less hardy than the peach, and bears all the 

 appearance of being an artificial tree which we may 

 look upon as a weakened form of the peach. 



Few medicinal virtues seem to be accorded to the 

 tree or its fruit. Pliny, who found remedies in most 

 of the plants he describes, recommends the leaves 

 beaten up, to be applied topically to arrest haemor- 

 rhage : the kernels, mixed with oil and vinegar, to 

 be used as a liniment for the cure of headache — a 

 care which some commentators on his writings 

 attribute to the hydrocyanic acid contained in the 

 kernels. 



Gerarde gives nearly the same recipe as good for 

 ''restoring and bringing again the hair" that is fallen 

 off. "The gum," says he, "serveth in a looch or 

 licking medicine for those that be troubled with a 

 cough." 



In the present day we recognize no meiicinal 

 virtues in peach or nectarine, making use only of the 

 delicious fruit and of the kernel, which distilled 

 forms the foundation of the liqueur known as Noyeau. 



A SHORT AFTERNOON'S CONCHOLOGICAL 

 WORK IN WINTER IN NORTH STAF- 

 FORDSHIRE. 



THE frost had only been gone a few days and the 

 thermometer was rising and varying from 38 

 to 40°, when my friend Mr. T. F. Burrows, an 

 enthusiastic conchologist, proposed to me on the 18th 

 December last, that he should take me the next day 

 to see if we could find specimens of that local and by 

 .no means common mollusc, Helix fusca, which he had 

 been able to add to our list of North Staffordshire 

 Mollusca a few weeks before, having discovered it on 

 the edge of the mountain limestone district about five 

 miles away. This shell is included in the list con- 

 tained in Garner's "Natural History of Stafford- 

 shire," but had not been met with in recent years. I 

 jumped at my friend's suggestion and was only too 

 glad to think that I should at last probably be able to 

 find this little mollusc in its native home, after 

 searching for it in vain during the last five or six 

 years. Off we started, soon after noon the next day ; 

 being rather later than we expected, and also 

 remembering that we were close upon the shortest 

 day, we hurriedly prepared our collecting bottles, 

 and not forgetting light refreshment in our pockets, 

 we arrived at our happy hunting-ground about two 

 o'clock. Partaking of our frugal meal as we went 

 along, our first halt was made at an old disused lime- 

 stonequarry, which brought back to our recollection 

 many former happy visits a few years ago when we 



had here collected specimens of Bulimus obscurui 

 var. alba. More beautiful shells than these I have 

 never seen, and I am afraid the little series in my 

 collection has often excited envy in brother concho- 

 logists. I can only regret that the variety is not 

 sufficiently plentiful here to supply other cabinets. 

 We did not stay long at this spot, only observing 

 that Helix caperata and H. rupestris were both 

 abroad in some numbers, and this augured well for 

 our finding fusca also out. I must not however omit 

 to mention that my friend, on turning over a piece of 

 limestone, disturbed a lively little field vole (Ai-vicola 

 agrestis), and both of us being enthusiastic naturalists, 

 we hurriedly boxed the little animal in a bed of 

 leaves for future examination, hoping he might turn 

 out to be A. glareolus, which is found in this district, 

 and of which a brother naturalist was in want of a 

 specimen ; it however turned out to be A. agrestis, 

 after all. Proceeding on our way we next came 

 across a decaying log which looked too promising to 

 pass by ; the woodpeckers had been busily at work 

 upon it, and guided by the holes they had made we 

 dug deeper into the rotten wood and soon discovered 

 a small colony of the curiously shaped rhinoceros 

 beetle {Sinodendren cylindricum) hibernating in the 

 log, which we bottled for a coleopterous friend. 

 Whilst searching further in the decayed wood we 

 came across Helix rotundata in some abundance, 

 which had retired beneath the bark to lay their eggs, 

 as is the habit with these molluscs ; glancing at these 

 little snails as they came into visw, one caught my 

 eye which for a moment puzzled me — a dark slatey- 

 grey in colour and without the usual reddish spots. 

 On taking it up I at once saw that I had got a prize 

 and that it was var. albida ; this makes the second 

 specimen of this variety that I have taken in this 

 neighbourhood. We now hurried on to the fusca 

 locality, as not much daylight remained ; a small 

 spinney on the shady side of a little valley between 

 the hills was our destination. The ground was very 

 damp and covered with decaying nettle-stalks, under 

 which grew the red campion {Lychnis dioica) upon 

 the leaves of which my friend had first found Helix 

 fusca, and this appears to be its food-plant here. 

 Gwyn Jeffreys, in his " British Conchology," mentions 

 that this mollusc feeds upon the leaves of the alder. 

 Amongst other reasons that I have for thinking that 

 the campion is its general food-plant, is the strong 

 resemblance of this mollusc to a decaying capsule or 

 seed case of the campion : the thin shell of this snail 

 is the exact colour of the capsule when wet — a trans- 

 parent horn colour, and the bottom of the capsule, 

 which is a light yellow, exactly resembles one portion 

 of the viscera of H. fusca as seen through its shell ; in 

 fact, so close did we find the mimicry, that we 

 mistook these capsules in several instances for these 

 shells at first sight. But I must return to our search : 

 on arriving at the exact spot, down on our knees was 

 the order of the day, and turning over the campion 



