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HA RD WICKE' S SCIENCE- G OSSIP. 



to Blacksod Bay, where the villagers took it to be the 

 carcase of a large whale. It was afterwards carried 

 on to the beach by the gale which swept over the 

 Western Ocean on the night of October the 4th. 

 The suckers, horny rings, and parrot-like horny 

 beak, had fallen off,, and it was too far gone in 

 decay to be specifically recognised : the length of 

 the tentacles or long arms was 30 feet each ; 

 the circumference of body, including short arms, 

 60 feet, and the circumference of the tentacles in 

 some places four feet. It would appear to be the 

 fourth recorded instance of the appearance of this 

 strange monster in British waters ; and from a list of 

 such marvels cast upon our shores variously compiled, 

 I conclude that a great percentage is owing to the 

 storms at the maximum and minimum of sun-spots. 

 How disastrous might have been such an event to 

 Hibernian politics in the days of Daniel the Prophet. 

 "The only events attributed by Berosus to this 

 portentous antediluvian period," says Sir George 

 Cornewall Lewis in his " Astronomy of the Ancients," 

 " are the periodical appeances of certain amphibious 

 monsters, compounded of man and fish, like the 

 mermen of medieval fiction, who passed the night in 

 the Red Sea, but came upon land during the daytime. 

 The prevailing name for these monsters was 

 Annedotus ; but some of them received other 

 denominations." The kings then lived the following 

 number of Sari : Alorus, 10 ; Alaparus, 3 ; Amelon, 

 13; Ammenon, 12; Amegalarus, 18; Daonus, 10; 

 Enedorachus, 18; Amempsinus, 10; Otiartes, 8; 

 Xisuthrus, 18 ; in all, 120 Sari. Fanatical kings 

 after the deluge would have proportionate^ shorter 

 lives ; and taken as years this may not inaptly 

 represent our modern sun-spot epochs, so it is 

 probable that we have here, from some source or 

 other, an Assyrian Book of Fate. — A. H. Swinton. 



Bees. — I hatched a bee yesterday (Sept. 30th) 

 under peculiar circumstances. A door lock was 

 found to be in non-working order, and when it had 

 been taken to pieces the inside was discovered 

 crowded with cells, the production, I believe, of a 

 mason bee. It presented a remarkable appearance ; 

 the cells, constructed of clay, having a roughly 

 hexagonal arrangement, and being covered at the 

 top with a liberal food supply in the form of yellow 

 masses of pollen. Each cell had a pupal sac inside, 

 dark brown in colour, but coated with grey down. 

 The key-hole was wonderfully small, so that I pre- 

 sume the colony was formed by a single female. 

 I opened a case containing a living bee ; the head 

 and thorax appeared to be black, the abdomen 

 dark brown with golden yellow hairs. The wings 

 were imperfect as yet, but transparent. In another 

 locality I have noticed a similar kind of bee, each 

 having a solitary hole in a bank, and basking in the 

 sunshine at the entrance until frightened in at the 

 approach of footsteps. They spent most of the day 

 in collecting pollen from a coniferous tree hard by, 

 returning from each journey laden in the accustomed 

 manner. The two were either identical or closely 

 allied species. I presume it is right to style them 

 mason bees. In the summer a leaf-cutting bee was 

 at work in the garden. It cut absolutely true circles 

 in the scarlet geranium petals. I tracked the flight 

 by the colour, finding the nest in a hole in the wall ; 

 the fragments of petals formed a lining to the cell in 

 the mortar between the interstices of brick. — "Bee 

 Hunter'' 



Gutta-Percha. — The history of the discovery 

 and development of gutta-percha is one of great 

 interest. It was first brought to notice in 1842, at 



Singapore, when it attracted much attention, and 

 soon found its way to Europe ; one of the first uses 

 to which it was put being for soling boots, in con- 

 sequence of its imperviousness to water, and its 

 supposed greater durability than leather. Being 

 easily moulded by heat, it was soon applied to the 

 manufacture of pails, buckets, basins, water-pipes, 

 door-handles, knobs for drawers, and a host of similar 

 purposes. In consequence of its being a non- 

 conductor of electricity, coupled with its durability 

 under water, it soon became used for coating the 

 wires of deep-sea telegraphs, for this purpose, how- 

 ever, indiarubber is now much more extensively 

 used. The plant was originally described by Sir W. 

 J. Hooker, in 1847, in the "Journal of Botany," 

 under the name of Isonandra gutta, which has since 

 been sunk under that of Dichopsis gutta, Benth. by 

 which name the true gutta-percha-yielding tree is 

 now known. It is a large tree, sixty to seventy feet 

 high, with a trunk two or three feet in diameter. At 

 the time of its discovery it was abundant at Singapore, 

 but during the next five or six years it was so persis- 

 tently destroyed for the extraction of the milky juice 

 that the tree was almost exterminated, and at the 

 present time only a few trees, that are carefully 

 preserved as curiosities, exist at Singapore. In 1847 

 it was plentiful at Penang, but a similar fate has 

 overtaken it there. To collect the milk, the trees 

 are cut down, and the bark is stripped off, when it 

 flows readily, and is collected in a cocoa-nut shell, 

 the spathe of a palm, or some similarly improvised 

 vessel, and formed into blocks or lumps of various 

 sizes and shapes, the fluid quickly coagulating on 

 exposure to the air. The average quantity obtained 

 from one tree is about twenty pounds, and as the 

 imports into this country amount to between 40,000 

 and 60,000 cwt. annually, an enormous number of 

 trees have to be sacrificed to supply the demand. — 

 From Cassell's " Neiv Popular Educator.'' 1 



Copper-Plates from Nature. — Plants, insects, 

 etc., are copied in the following manner by Auer in 

 the Government Office at Vienna : The plant is 

 placed between sheets of blotting-paper, pressed, and 

 allowed to dry : it is then placed in water, and again 

 left to dry. The plant is then laid upon a smooth 

 lead plate, covered with a steel plate, and exposed to 

 pressure, and a mould is obtained from the impres- 

 sion left on the lead ; the copper-plate prepared from 

 this mould is used in the press. For etching plates 

 Smee gives the following directions : The copper 

 plate is covered with a substance such as wax, pitch, 

 resin, etc. The drawing is then made with a needle 

 so that the bright copper is visible. The plate is then 

 placed -in a copper bath forming the positive electrode. 

 The oxygen given off at the positive electrode oxidises 

 the copper at the bright portions, and this oxide 

 dissolves in the sulphuric acid. At the negative 

 electrode, which is also a copper-plate, copper which 

 is separated out is deposited. When etchings are 

 required which are not uniform, the copper-plate 

 must be taken out of the bath, and the portions that 

 are not to be etched further must be covered with 

 wax. — From " Electricity in the Service of Man." 



Mosses. — Attractive and luxuriant as are so many 

 of our common mosses in a state of nature, and, as a 

 casual observer may be led to believe, therefore of 

 easy culture, they are nevertheless by no means easy 

 to grow with any degree of success under the widely 

 different conditions which generally obtain artificially. 

 A few hints as to the species most likely to please, 

 and the best way in which experience has taught the 

 writer to treat them, will be given. If no special 



