40 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE- GOSSIP. 



recollect seeing anything like feathers in their pel- 

 lets, but only beetles' wings and other insect re" 

 mains. Even in the colonies, if the curious and very 

 helpless creatures could be made a sort of royal 

 game, it would be very desirable. It is much to be 

 feared that in very few years' time the Platypus, the 

 Apterix, and other marvels of those lands, will fol- 

 low the fate of the Great A uk, the Dodo, the Dinor- 

 nis, and the Moa. It is a question how far man has 

 a right to exterminate every or any race of God's 

 creatures that may be supposed to lessen the in- 

 crease of another. Geouge Cox. 



BOTANY. 



Poisoning Dkied Plants. — It is commonly 

 recommended to wash specimens for the herbarium 

 with a solution of corrosive sublimate. Is this 

 really necessary ? I have never used any poisoning 

 process at all ; and though I have many specimens 

 in my herbarium which have been there for thirty 

 years, I have never been troubled with either mould 

 or insects. My plants have not been particularly 

 well cared for : during one period of ten years they 

 were pretty much their own guardians. Neither 

 camphor nor any other perfume has protected them ; 

 they have accompanied me in half a dozen changes 

 of residence, yet they remain safe and whole, and 

 show no signs of ruin. The only circumstance which 

 I know of in their favour is, that they have been 

 kept in closed boxes — not air-tight, however. Now 

 if my plants have been kept so well under such 

 conditions, without poisoning, where is the necessity 

 for that troublesome and rather dangerous process ? 

 Will some of your correspondents tell us their 

 experience in the matter ? — F. T. Moil, Leicester. 



ZOOLOGY. 



Death's-head Hawk-moth.— Superstition has 

 been particularly active in suggesting causes of 

 alarm from the insect world ; and where man should 

 have seen only beauty and wisdom, he has often 

 found terror and dismay. The yellow and brown- 

 tail moths, the death-watch, and many others, have 

 all been the subjects of his fears. Butthe dread 

 excited in England by the appearance, noises, or 

 increase of insects are petty apprehensions when 

 compared with the horror that the presence of the 

 Acherontia occasions to some of the more super- 

 stitious natives of Northern Europe. A letter is 

 now before me from a correspondent in German 

 Poland, where this insect is a common crea- 

 ture, and so abounded in 1829 that my informant 

 collected fifty of them in the potato-fields of 

 his village, where they call them the " Deatli's- 

 hcad Phantom," the "Wandering Death-bird," 

 &c. The markings on its back represent to their 

 fertile imaginations the head of a perfect skeleton. 



with the limb bones crossed beneath. Its cry 

 becomes the voice of anguish, the moaning of 

 a child, the signal of grief. It is regarded 

 not as the creation of a benevolent Peing, but 

 the device of evil spirits, enemies to man, con- 

 ceived and fabricated in the dark; and the very 

 shining of its eyes is thought to represent the fiery 

 element whence it is supposed to have proceeded . 

 Plying into their apartments in the evening, it at 

 times extinguishes the light, foretelling war, pes- 

 tilence, hunger, "death, to man and beast. — Journal 

 of a Naturalist. 



Dk. Knaggs describes, in the Entomologist's 

 Monthly Magazine for January, a species of Noctua 

 {Agrotls helvetina) new to Britain. Several specimens 

 were captured in the middle of November last, near 

 Derby. This is a rare species abroad, but has been 

 known to occur in Germany, Prance, Switzerland, 

 &c. The larva is unknown. 



New Species of Rail. — The President of the 

 Zoological Society describes a new species of Rail, 

 to which he has given the name of Porzana bicolor, 

 in the January number of the Magazine of Natural 

 History. Its colour is chiefly grey, especially on 

 the lower parts of the body, the upper being 

 ferruginous-olive and dark slate-colour. It was 

 shot at Rungbee, Darjeeling. 



Blind Animals of the Kentucky Mammoth 

 Cave. — In the American Naturalist for December 

 last, there is given a lengthy and interesting descrip- 

 tion of the various creatures found living within this 

 famous cavern. The fishes, all of which are blind, 

 will be described in a future number. One beetle 

 {Anopthalmus) was totally blind, and in another 

 {Adelops) there were only pale spots, or rudimentary 

 eyes. A wingless grasshopper (Rhaphidophord) was 

 fou)id jumping about with great alacrity. A species 

 of Campodea was also discovered hiding under 

 stones in damp places, and this too was eyeless. A 

 small spider, white and very small, was in the same 

 condition. The " Harvestmen " were represented 

 by a species {Acanthocheir armatd), also white, and 

 equally blind. A myriapod was found having 

 rudimentary eyes. Most interesting, however, are 

 the blind crawfish {Camharus j)ellucidus'), in which 

 the eyes are rudimentary in the adults, but much 

 larger in the young. The writers think that tliis is 

 an evidence that the inheritance of the blind con- 

 dition is probably due to causes first acting on the 

 adults and transmitted to the young, ending iu the 

 production of offspring that becomes blind through 

 habit. The strangest of those eyeless creatures 

 mentioned, is, perhaps, an isopod {Ccecidota) , inas- 

 much as it is nearly allied to species in the Austrian 

 caves, which are in a similar condition. 



The Liver. — In reply to " Inquirer," in your 

 January number, I beg to say that the sketch here- 



