HARDWICKE'5 SCIEN CE-GOSSIP. 



161 



vi'ms at tlie same moment, we had a good oppor- 

 tunity of comparing the flight of the two birds. 

 The stork looked the larger of tlie two, and his 

 wings appeared to be longer and less rounded than 

 tliose of the heron ; the different manner of carrying 

 the head, too, was also very striking— it was poked 

 out in front of the bird, but not stretched out so 

 straight as that of the swan in flying." [Since the 

 above appeared, another paragraph has announced 

 that the poor visitor has been shot at Potter 

 Heigham. Long may the "sportsman" who did 

 the deed rejoice over such an act of bravery !— Ed. 

 S.G.] 



Venomous Caterpillars.— Mr. A. M. Testing 

 contributes the following note to Nature :—" Be- 

 tweeu the years 1S57 and 1862, when stationed at 

 Belozi, the capital of British Honduras, I made the 

 acquaintance of a so-called venomous caterpillar, 

 which was held in very great dread by the natives, 

 vvho averred that 'its Me always produced fever.' 

 Knowing their superstitious habits, and that, as far 

 as my knowledge of natural history went, there did 

 not exist a caterpillar capable of producing a wound 

 of any kind by did/.ff, 1 resolved to test the truth 

 of the assertion. Accordingly, and to the intense 

 horror of the bystanders, 1 took one in my hand 

 from a tree that was literally covered with them. 

 It was about li in. long by § in. thick, of a blue- 

 grey tint, and, in addition to the flue long hairs 

 which clothed it, was armed with clusters of short 

 spines. These clusters were formed into rows, and 

 contained about a dozen spines each. After a care- 

 ful examination, 1 came to the conclusion that they 

 were most likely to be the seat of the venomous 

 propensities attributed to the insect, so I struck 

 the back of my right hand against them two or 

 three times, to see what would be the effect. They 

 were very brittle, and broke off as they entered the 

 skin. I thought no more about it till about an 

 hour had elapsed, when I experienced in the wrist 

 a dead pain, which gradually extended to the arm- 

 pit, followed by a swelling of the glands. For the 

 whole day the pain was sufficient to render my arm 

 useless; hence I thought that there must be some 

 poisonous secretion in the spines, for the irritation 

 caused by fine points, even if barbed, would scarcely 

 produce such an eft'ect. The pain died away in 

 the evening, unattended by any feverish symptoms 

 whatever, for I was in excellent health at the time. 

 Next day I examined several of the spines under 

 the microscope ; they were not barbed, but hollow, 

 and under pressure emitted a colourless trans- 

 parent fluid, to which I attributed the poisonous 

 qualities which caused me so much pain." 



The Flight of Birds.— Mr. J. Guthrie, of Cape 

 Colony, writes to ask for naturalists to assist, by 

 observation, in throwing light upon the following 

 points. He says :— " Some time since I had occa- 



sion to ascend a mountain in the neighbourhood. 

 The wind was blowing over the ridge-like crest of 

 the mountain with a velocity of, I should say, tea 

 or twelve miles an hour, sweeping with increased 

 rapidity througii certain transverse gorges cutting 

 the ridge at right angles. In one of these I ob- 

 served a hawk hovering in search of prey. In the 

 midst of this rapid air-current the bird remained 

 apparently fxed in space, without fluttering a 

 wing, for at least two minutes. After a time it 

 gently changed its position a few feet with a slight 

 motion of its wings, and then came to rest again 

 as before, remaining apparently as motionless as 

 the rocks around it, From my nearness to it a 

 change of position of an inch would have been 

 clearly visible, and yet, except when it seemed to 

 desire to change its point of observation no motion 

 of any kind could be detected. How is this to be 

 accounted for? Does a bird possess the power of 

 giving an extremely rapid tremulous motion to its 

 wings invisible even at a small distance, similar in 

 its nature to the wing-vibration of certain insects, 

 which, as any one may have noticed, have a similar 

 power of iipparently lixing themselves in space 

 over a flower, for example, notwithstanding a con- 

 siderable amount of motion in the air in which 

 they are suspended ? " 



BOTANY. 



Variation of Colours in Flowers.— The 

 change in the colours of white flowers noticed by 

 Mr. Stralton in Science-Gossip for June with re- 

 ference to the ConvaUariu majalis is no doubt dilH- 

 cult to account for ; but does not the fact that they 

 are sometimes changed in cultivation, as in the com- 

 mon daisy {Beliis pereii>Hs),hGco\\\\n^ as itdoes a deep 

 red, lead to the supposition that it may be attribut- 

 able to the change of soil ? At the same time it 

 would be difficult, on the same theory, to account 

 for the variation iu the same plants growing close 

 together. 1 have found, for instance, in the Swiss 

 mo\midins,i\iQ Gentiana acatiUs white, though very 

 rarely (rarissimealba— Gaudin, "Flora Helvetica"), 

 growing by the side of others of the ordinary bright 

 blue colour, with others of various sliades between 

 the two. Again, I found in a grove at Geneva, on the 

 banks of the Khone, the common wood anemone of 

 a decided pink colour growing with others perfectly 

 white, together with tlie pretty Anemone rununcu- 

 loides, which was very abundant, in very ligiit soil, 

 formed apparently by the decayed leaves of ages. 

 Verlot says that flowers which are normally white 

 rarely vary into any other colour. The daisy is an 

 instance of such variation, and the wood anemone 

 under cultivation might perhaps be the same. 

 Since writing the above 1 have seen a Florist's 

 Catalogue of Plants for sale, printed for circulation 



