20 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



or heron-shaw, s. Iieronniere." I seldom go to 

 my water-meadows on the Yeo, in Dorset, without 

 seeing a heron. I fancy we have more than one 

 heronry or heronshaw in the county, though they 

 must be over ten miles from this. — /. Buclcman, 

 Bradford Abbas. 



Hekneshaw. — Spenser himself, in his spirited 

 description, furnishes the key to the mystery ; the 

 bird meant is the heron, which is often ([ might say 

 always) called by the country people in the Eastern 

 counties a " harnsaw," or " harnsey." Shak- 

 speare makes Hamlet speak of " knowing a hawk 

 from a hernshaw," stupidly corrupted into " hand- 

 saw." Chaucer in his " Squire's Tale " has " heron- 

 sewes" : — 



" I wol not tellen of hir strange sewes (dishes), 

 Ne of hir swannes, ne hir heronsewes." 



In a Latin glossary, circa 1559, Ardeola (Ardea) is 

 translated a hearnesew ; in MS. Gloss. Line, we 

 have hernsue; in Reliq. Antiq. it is spelt herunsew ; 

 in our modern lexicons hernshaw is explained as 

 meaning a heronry ; in Grieb's German Dictionary 

 Keiherstand is translated hernshaw, heronry; Dansk 

 Ordbog, heirekede is translated herons' nests, hern, 

 shaw. Tyrwhitt, in his glossary to Chaucer, explains 

 heronsewes to mean young herons, no doubt deriving 

 it from the French heronneau, a young heron. I am 

 not quite sure that hernshaw and heronseto were not 

 formerly distinct words ; the former being com- 

 pounded of hern (heron), and shaw a small wood or 

 coppice, and /zerow^e?^, a corruption oi heronneau; the 

 two words were no doubt soon confounded, and 

 heronsew, hernsew, harnsaw, and harnshaw were 

 applied to the bird itself, as, for instance, the 

 word " eelfare " is a provincialism for a young eel 

 (in some counties corrupted to Elver). The word 

 '.' eel-fare " was originally applied to the migration of 

 the young eels, from the Anglo-Saxon \Q^h faren, 

 to go. — F. Kitton. 



Borings in Fossil Wood.— Some time ago a 

 friend at Castleton, Derbyshire, gave me a piece of 

 fossil wood. On cutting up this piece 1 found it 

 to be pierced with small round holes, somewhat less 

 than ^ of an inch in diameter. At first I 

 thought these holes might be part of the structure 

 of the wood; but on grinding the sections down, I 

 found them to be the borings of some small larva 

 or beetle, for I could plainly see, under the micro- 

 scope, that the walls of the vascular tissue of the 

 wood had been gnawed away. The borings at in- 

 tervals are filled with the excrements of the iusect, 

 all beautifully preserved. Tiie wood is silicated, 

 and shows the markings on the walls of the vessels 

 very well — two and sometimes three rows of pitted 

 ducts. — John Butterworth. 



Insect Anatomy. — Would any of your corre- 

 spondents inform me of the titles .and price of any 

 works on insect anatomy ? I have several good 

 works on general entomology, also Lowne's "Ana- 

 tomy of Blow-fly;" but would like to have some 

 work treating on the anatomy of insects in general. 

 — /. S. H. Wigan. 



MlCROGIlAPHIC DiCTIONAKY (SCIENCE-GoSSIP, 



p. 276, 1872).—" W. L. N. " is mistaken respecting 

 the Dictionary. Parts IX. and X. were published 

 in August and November respectively. It is unlikely 

 that a book with a constantly increasing demand 

 would be abandoned in the middle of the third 

 edition.— -E". P. F. 



Hawk and Canary. — Thinking the following 

 incident would be interesting to many of the 

 ornithological readers of Science-Gossip, I have 

 extracted it from the columns of the Hereford Times. 

 A similar occurrence is mentioned by Montagu, with 

 this exception, that the window was opened, the 

 hawk captured, and paid the penalty for its au- 

 dacity. " One Sunday morning lately, the writer 

 of this brief notice was present in the house of a 

 gentleman in Hereford. A canary was hanging in 

 a cage in the window next the street, when a hawk 

 from some gardens opposite flew against the window, 

 evidently desirous to make the songster its prey. 

 In this it was foiled ; but the fright was fatal to its 

 intended victim, for it fell fi-om its perch, lingered 

 for a day or two, and then died."— P. B. J., Here- 

 ford. 



Sugaring. — I noticed some nionths back, in the 

 pages of this periodical, inquiries as to the modus 

 operandi. Pull directions were given by many 

 correspondents. But let not those with whom the 

 season has been the first time of trying it be dis- 

 couraged at their want of success. Night after 

 night have I made my expeditions, and the result, 

 on nearly every occasion, the same — "a beggarly 

 account of empty boxes." There can be but little 

 doubt that this was owing to the unseasonably cold 

 weather which prevailed. From observations made 

 by Mr. Glaisher, at the Royal Observatory, the 

 temperature was some degrees lower than it has 

 been in the corresponding month (September) for 

 the last fifty years. And I entirely concur with 

 " J.R.S.C." and Mr. Reeks, that " mild, wet winters 

 prove far more destructive to insect life than dry 

 ones with any amount of severe frosts." — Joseph 

 Anderson, Junr. 



An Optical Query. — Will some one of your 

 readers, skilled in optics, give me the rationale of the 

 following effect ? Holding between the candle and 

 the eye, at a distance of almost six or seven inches 

 from the latter, a glass slide with an opaque micro- 

 scopic object about k of an inch in diameter in the 

 centre, I notice an opaque object which obscures 

 the light of the candle ; but as the glass is ap- 

 proached more nearly to tiie eye, the opaque object 

 vanishes, and the entire flame of the candle is seen, 

 as if no opaque object intervened. — R. H. Nisbett 

 Browne. 



Interference of Light. — On Saturday, the 

 15th of June, 1872, I was reading at the hour of 

 3.55 A.M., in a room having an eastern aspect. 

 The room was lighted by a common benzoline spirit 

 lamp set on the table, which was, however, burning 

 rather dimly, having been alight all night. I held 

 the book I was reading so as to throw the combined 

 light of the dawn entering by the window and the 

 benzoline lamp on it. On coming to the bottom of 

 a page, I was much surprised to notice that the 

 shadow cast by my hand on the white margin of the 

 page was of a bright blue colour. Thinking this 

 might be the result of some derangement of mv 

 eyesight, I tried the experiment with papers of 

 various colours, but found the result the same. 

 The shadow cast by tiie lamp was black at and 

 within six inches of the flame ; then faintly blue or 

 indigo for three or four inches ; at twelve inches it 

 was deeply, darkly, beautifully blue; at two or 

 three feet it was fainter; and at six feet was only 

 seen as a blue umbra or fringe round the black 

 shadow. The distance of the lamp from the window 

 was seven feet. I noted these particulars at once, 



