196 



HARBWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



the rest of B., his co-semi, he may, by skilfully and 

 delicately offering to B. a setting of his choice silver- 

 pencilled Rotterdams, and the loan of a setting hen, 

 terminate the trouble by securing B.'s acceptance and 

 thus making him a fowl owner ; for when the cocks 

 are crowing and the hens are cackling in the back 

 premises of both houses the harmony is so perfect 

 that nobody is disturbed. 



Where no such unity of action is attainable another 

 remedy might, I think, be found. Let prizes be 

 offered at Agricultural shows for a breed of dumb 

 cocks. By artificial selection, such as Darwin 

 describes to have effected the wondrous modifications 

 of pigeons, this desideratum may surely be obtained, 

 and presently extended to hens by only breeding from 

 those which lay their eggs modestly, without any 

 vociferous proclamation of the achievement. 



In the "Journal of Science" of June last is"an 

 account by Henry H. Higgins of the piercing of five 

 lawn handkerchiefs by the grass of a closely-mowed 

 lawn upon which the handkerchiefs were spread for 

 bleaching. All were pierced : some of the blades had 

 grown two inches above the handkerchief without 

 destroying the texture of the lawn. The experiment 

 was repeated with partial success under less favour- 

 able circumstances. Many other curious experiments 

 of this kind may be made. At the present moment 

 I have in my garden an example of vegetable perse- 

 verance, an attribute that might supply an additional 

 chapter in the next edition of Mr. Taylor's " Sagacity 

 and Morality of Plants." Last year I grew some 

 artichokes on a nearly worthless piece of ground, and 

 reaped the usual crop. Late in the autumn, I placed a 

 bee-hive on a stand made up of old packing-cases over 

 this same ground. .Some of the small tubers that 

 had escaped the fork sprouted, as they are wont to 

 do, but under the inverted packing-case, and, after 

 struggling for a while in their gloomy prison, dis- 

 covered a chink through which they have thrust 

 themselves, horizontally at first, and since have bent 

 and grown upwards, like ordinary jilants. 



The old subject of the utilisation of the Niagara 

 Falls is again in course of agitation over the water. 

 The American Association of Civil Engineers have 

 had it under discussion quite lately. Mr. Benjamin 

 Rhodes estimates the total horse-power at work nighl 

 and day at seven millions, and that to utilize this 

 by means of water wheels generating electric currents, 

 and to transmit these to cities within five hundred 

 miles' radius, would require an outlay of 5000 millions 

 of dollars. This latter and practical part of the 

 estimate is curious when applied to power which has 

 been described as " running to waste." 



Electrical dreamers are much addicted to financial 

 fallacies ; and when the electrical transmission of this 

 vast supply of power was first suggested, the notion 

 prevailed that it might be conveyed to New York, &c., 

 for " next to nothing," by merely laying a wire to 

 carry it. These projectors had not considered the 



fact that a wire of given length must have a thickness 

 proportionate to the quantity of electricity it has to 

 carry, and that the longer the wire the greater the 

 thickness demanded for carrying a given supply. 

 Taking this and all the sources of dispersion as well 

 as the cost of the primary dynamos into consideration, 

 I think it will be found practically that the conversion 

 of the mechanical power of this or any other water- 

 fall to a distance of a few hundred miles will cost 

 about as much as a tubular aqueduct that would carry 

 the w^ater itself. In other words, the Niagara might 

 l)e tapped and -^^ part of its w-aters be carried to New 

 York for about the same cost as the electrical trans- 

 mission of the mechanical power of the falls, of which 

 at least 99 per cent, would be lost by dissipation and 

 conversion. The cost of either would be monstrous. 



W. Mattieu Williams. 



ON OUR BRITISH SEA-WORMS. 

 By Dr. P. Q. Keegan. 



[jConiinucd front page 183.) 



FREQUENTLY, at low-water mark, or hurled 

 ashore by the waves, we may observe pieces of 

 fucus seaweed studded with a number of little white 

 shells, twisted into a spiral. If we break one of these 

 shells, extract the contents thereof, and place it under 

 the microscope, we shall observe an organism with 

 branchice, bristles, and files of hooks, very similar to 

 those of the Serpula already described. These are 

 specimens of Spirorbis, of which S. nautiloides is the 

 commonest form. There are about seventeen British 

 species of this genus, distinguished from one another by 

 such features as a dull or glassy aspect of the shell, its 

 more or less cylindrical form, its being ridged or 

 smooth, being pierced in the centre or not, and so forth. 



We now advance to a group of Annelids that may be 

 considered intermediate between the tube-constructing 

 forms we have already described, and those which 

 are free and unconfined to the fixed tenure of a case. 

 Among this intermediate group, the common lugworm 

 or lobworm is placed, and it is so common and so 

 familiarly known, that we need not particularly 

 delineate it. 



It may be sufficient to observe that therein the 

 blood-system is more centralised than in any other 

 annelid ; there are a series of feathered bristles and 

 also hooks, and a large proboscis eminently adapted 

 for enabling the animal to burrow dexterously in the 

 soft watery sand wherein it dwells. There is also 

 another anomalous worm called Trophonia phimosa 

 and a number of other names. Its habits are seden- 

 tary and porcine ; it grovels in the dirtiest crevices of 

 a muddy shore, &c., and it is a very queer-looking 

 customer, having all round its circumference long, 

 mud-smeared bristles, seen_ under the microscope to 



