2 3 8 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



near Eastbourne. They are patinated and white, 

 resembling the ordinary fractured flints found on the 

 downs. No text-book, or treatise on flint imple- 

 ments appears to mention flint implements as found 

 in abundance on the downs, and they are dissimilar 

 to those, few and far between, found on the 

 Wiltshire downs. It is just possible that a record of 

 these may be of public interest, and I am anxious to 

 rescue the history and origin of this collection from 

 oblivion. I shall be grateful for any notes or 

 references on the subject. — A. S. Eve, Marlborough 

 College. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Pin-hole Photography. — In the excellent 

 "Dictionary of Photography" now being weekly 

 published in the "Amateur Photographer," Mr. E. 

 J. Wall says : " Of late years the possibility of 

 taking passable negatives without the use of an 

 ordinary camera and lens has become an established 

 fact. For this purpose any rectangular box which is 

 absolutely light-tight will do. In one end make a 

 minute hole with the point of a needle, and at the 

 other end place the sensitive plate, keeping it in its 

 place by means of a clip or other simple arrangement. 

 A prolonged exposure is required about twenty or 

 thirty times the ordinary one, for any given subject. 

 No focussing is required, as the image is always fairly 

 sharp, no matter what distance the plate is from the 

 hole. The larger the plate the wider the angle, and 

 the greater the distance, the larger the image. As an 

 experiment it should be tried by every amateur, as 

 the materials are always at his command in the shape 

 of an empty plate-box." 



Saccharine. — Replying to the query of Rev. H. 

 Whittaker in July issue : Roughly speaking, diabetes 

 is a form of disease by which all foods are turned 

 into a sugar, and passed away without nourishing the 

 body. The great effort of the physician is therefore 

 to provide food for the patient having no sugar in it 

 to aggravate the complaint. Saccharine is merely a 

 sweet taste, being a mineral product, it could not 

 assimilate, and was believed to pass out of the body 

 unchanged. This view has now been challenged by 

 some leading French scientists, who assert that when 

 it does not assimilate, it also does not pass away, but 

 remains in the body to accumulate, in which case it 

 would not be desirable to use it for any purpose 

 whatever. I may further mention that Government 

 prohibit its use for brewing, and Somerset House 

 authorities have just announced their success in 

 finding a good test for detecting its presence. — G. H. 

 Wicks, Bristol. 



What Insect ? — Will any reader of Science- 

 Gossip tell me the name of a dipterous insect, about 

 as large as a blue-bottle fly, wings transparent, with 

 curious clouded appearance, in irregular patches of 

 smoke colour, eyes of splendid colour, red, yellow, 

 and green, in varied lights. — C. P. 



Tennyson's Natural History.— In Science- 

 Gossip for June, page 139, E. II. V. inquires 

 whether snipe hum ? In dear old Gilbert White's 

 Natural History of Selborne (letter to Thos. Pennant, 

 of August 4th, 1767), the following passage occurs : 

 " Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some 

 moory ground on the verge of this parish. It is very 



amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that time,. 

 and to hear his piping and humming notes." Un- 

 fortunately I have no personal knowledge which 

 would help in answering E. H. V.'s query; and I 

 shot, for snipe shooting is common out here where 

 the rice-swamps which are within very easy distance 

 of this city, afford splendid shooting. Tennyson 

 may, like Gilbert White, have heard the humming 

 notes of the snipe. I know that whenever wild birds 

 pass over this city at night, in the migrating season, 

 their shrill notes among the clouds always recall 

 Tennyson's line about the "birds that change their 

 seasons in the night." I think his description of a 

 tropical island, " the mountain wooded to the peak," 

 and so on, in " Enoch Arclen," is wonderfully accurate, 

 and in its own line usurpassed in poetry. By the 

 way, some of our water birds, snipe, &c, are said to 

 come to the swamps in Lower Bengal from Thibet, 

 and to do the long journey in a single night. I have 

 also heard that for two or three seasons, a water- 

 bird only found in Central Asia, visited one particular 

 pond in our Zoological Garden. It came during our 

 cold weather, and stayed only a few days. Whether 

 it was the same bird which came year after year, I 

 do not know ; but the presumption seems to have 

 been that it was. This is a very gossiping note, .but 

 scientific gossip is admissible in your columns ! — 

 IV. J. Simmons, Calcutta. 



Rudiments. — I notice that your correspondent 

 challenges a defence of the word rudimentary. I 

 should be sorry to be understood as speaking ex 

 catkedrd, but having given some little passing 

 attention to the comparative anatomy of the arthro- 

 pods, and observing that certain difficulties which 

 possibly predonderate with your lady writer lie without 

 the department of human anatomy, I must in courtesy 

 be forgiven if, as a matter of feeling, I beg personally 

 to differ as regards any lachrymose conclusions, end 

 I sincerely trust any remarks of mine may be as 

 kindly received as they are indeed conceived. The 

 word rudimentary, according to Dr. William Smith, 

 the classical lexicographer, is derived from the Latin 

 adjective rudis, in a natural state, not improved by 

 art, hence unwrought, unfilled, unformed, rough, 

 raw, wild ; and in the present sense I conclude 

 unspecialised ; but let us hear Dr. Darwin himself, 

 who thus writes to Sir Charles Lyell from Ilkey, 

 Yorkshire, under date of the eleventh of October, 

 1859 ("Life and Letters," vol. ii. pp. 213-14). " On 

 the theory of Natural Selection there is a wide distinc- 

 tion between rudimentary organs and what you call 

 germs of organs, and what I call in my bigger book 

 ' nascent ' organs An organ should not be called 

 rudimentary unless it be useless — as teeth which 

 never cut through the gums — the papillae, repre- 

 senting the pistil in male flowers, wing of Apteryx, 

 or better, the little wings under soldered elytra. 

 These organs are now plainly useless, and ii fortiori, 

 would be useless in a less developed state. Natural 

 Selection acts exclusively by preserving successive 

 slight, useful modifications. Hence Natural Selec- 

 tion cannot possibly make a useless or rudimentary 

 organ. Such organs are solely due to inheritance 

 (as explained in my discussion), and plainly bespeak 

 an ancestor having the organ in a useful condition. 

 They may be, and often have been, worked in for 

 other purposes, and then they are only rudimentary 

 for the original function, which is sometimes plainly 

 apparent." If the biography of genius affords any 

 proof that form and comeliness is indicative of inward 

 enlightenment, I for one should hail with pleasure the 

 future development, but as regards naturalists it is 

 not always thus. In the case of my deceased friend 



