40 



HAKDWICKE'S SC IE N C E-GOSS I P. 



MICROSCOPY. 



Old Change Micuoscopical Society.— We 

 notice that the sixth annual sozV/e of this tlourishing 

 society is to be held on Friday evening, February 

 28th, at the City Terminus Hotel, Cannon Street. 

 Whilst mentioning the society, we avail ourselves 

 of the opportunity to notice the capital series of 

 lectures which have been arranged for the session 

 of 1872-3. We have only to mention the'names of 

 Dr. Carpenter, Professor T. Rymer Jones, Mr. B. T. 

 Lowne, Mr. M. C. Cooke, and Dr. Julius Pollock 

 for our readers to appreciate the intellectual bill 

 of fare. 



Structure of Podura Scales.— The American 

 Naturalist states that Dr. J. W. S. Arnold has 

 succeeded in throwing off, by means of the electric 

 induction-spark, some of the " spines " of the fa- 

 miliar test-scale of Podura. Preparatory to this 

 experiment the scales are rendered brittle by drying 

 in an oven. The detached spines are easily beaded 

 by unilateral light. 



Bad Coke and the Microscope.— In a closed 

 iron stove I burn coke, which I think is unusually 

 bad this year, and whilst burning I find a liquid 

 perpetually dripping from the chimney, which, of 

 course, is a great nuisance, as I am obliged to keep 

 a vessel under it to catch it. After very many 

 fruitless attempts I have succeeded in producing 

 from it a very beautiful polariscopic object. With 

 a powerful light and deep-coloured selenite the 

 colours are very rich and brilliant ; also without the 

 selenite plate, with the polarizer turned " dark," 

 many of the ramifications appear to stand out in 

 very bold relief, of a fine gold-colour. From causes 

 which I am at present quite unable to determine, 

 this liquid gives a greater diversity of slides than 

 anything I have ever yet met with. I have five or 

 six totally different— indeed, you would scarcely de- 

 tect a " family likeness" in a dozen. I have a few 

 mounted slides of the above, which, for want of a 

 better name, 1 call " Distillation from the vapour of 

 coke," and shall be glad to exchange them for any- 

 thing special. — Alfred Allen. 



Blood-disks of Salmonid^. — At a late meeting 

 of the East Kent Natural History Society Mr. 

 Gulliver exhibited the blood-disks of Sahno fon- 

 tinalis and S. ferox, and showed that in the former 

 lish these corpuscles — having a mean length of 

 y^ViT and a breadth of ^Vo- f'f a^ inch— are the 

 largest yet known of the osseous fishes. In S.ferox 

 the corpuscles are but very slightly smaller. Thus 

 these results agree with those described and figured 

 of other species of the family in his memoir read at 

 the Zoological Society November 19,1872, in which 

 he concludes that the Salmon family is character- 

 ized, among the osseous fishes, by the large size 



of its blood-disks ; and hence these may be very 

 easily examined by the novice in this department of 

 micrography. 



Local Societies. — We are glad to note the 

 foundation of the New Cross Microscopical and 

 Natural History Society, under the presidency of 

 Mr. Jenner Weir, F.L.S., and the hon. secretary- 

 ship of Mr. Martin Burgess. The society meets at 

 the Commercial-rooms, Lewisham High-road, on 

 the third Wednesday of every month, at eight 

 o'clock. Its avowed objects are to enable micro- 

 scopists and students of natural history residing in 

 the neighbourhood of New Cross, Lewisham, and 

 Deptford, to meet and interchange communications 

 and specimens, to promote the acquisition of skUl in 

 the use of the microscope, and, by occasional excur- 

 sions into the country around, to investigate the 

 natural productions of the district. We cordially 

 wish the new society success. 



ZOOLOGY. 



Cleaning Feathers and Skins.— In reply to 

 your correspondent "W. II.," owing to my not 

 having got the August number of Science-Gossip, 

 I am unable to determine if it is a recipe for 

 simply cleaning feathers, or the whole skin of a bird, 

 that he requires. If the specimen is simply spotted 

 with blood, allow it to dry, and then take up some 

 of the feathers and lay them on the soft part of 

 your thumb and scratch them in the direction of 

 their length Avith the nail of the first finger : this will, 

 in most cases (and if no other attempt has been 

 made), remove the blood-spots. Should the skin be 

 dirty from grease or any other cause, or the blood- 

 stains be unable to be taken out by the above 

 means, adopt the following plan : — Take powdered 

 alum, 4oz. ; do. arsenic, 2oz., mix; in water 1 

 gallon. Steep the skin for some hours, till the 

 spots grow faint, then have ready a heap of " plaster 

 of Paris," in which the skin must be buried and left 

 till the plaster is dry, and then broken out. The 

 skin should not be allowed to drain too much, but 

 should contain sufiicient water to form a good thick 

 cake of the plaster round it. Care should be taken 

 not to take the skin out of the plaster till it is quite 

 dry. I have found this process succeed admirably 

 with duck, grebe, &c., but have not tried it with 

 owls, nightjars, and delicate-feathered birds. I 

 should be glad if " W. R." would report in the 

 Science-Gossip if he finds the plan answer,— /Som^A 

 Australian. 



Do Flies eat Pollen ? — A paper bearing on 

 this subject has been read by Mr. A. W. Bennett 

 before the Scientific Committee of the Horticultural 

 Society, in which it was stated, as the result both 

 of his own observations and those of E. Midler 



