HARDVYICKE'S SCIEN C E. GOSSIP. 



80 



break it open, you will find it full of little grubs. 

 Tliis little fly kills so many of the clirysalids that 

 in a few years the butterflies will not bo so common, 

 and cabbages will not be destroyed.—//. IF. S., 

 Boston, 3Iass." From the " Canadian Entomologist,^ 

 December, 1871. 



Deep-sea Dredging.— Professor Agassiz has 

 addressed a letter to a friend on this interesting 

 subject, in which he recapitulates the various forms 

 of organic life which may be expected to be dis- 

 covered still living in the deeper and still unexplored 

 parts of the sea-bottom. The principles upon whicii 

 he bases his prognostications are that there is a 

 correlation between the grades of animals in the 

 complication of their structure, their order of suc- 

 cession in geological times, their mode of develop- 

 ment from the egg, and their geographical distri- 

 bution upon the surface of the globe. 



The Tapir.— The British Museum has received 

 a series of specimens, of different ages, of Tapinis 

 villosKS, from the Cordilleras of Ecuador. The adult 

 male is black, closely covered with rather short hair ; 

 the young is covered with abundance of longer hairs. 

 The young is also marked with broad grey streaks, 

 more or less confluent, or united into short grey 

 lines. The nasal bone of the adult is elongate. 



TV'iiY Butterflies and Moths are scarce 

 AFTER A damp WINTER. — The circumstance that a 

 cold and dry winter is more favourable to tlie 

 development of lepidopterous insects than a mild 

 and wet one has been variously explained ; and 

 there is no doubt that several causes are concerned 

 in it. The effects of excessive moisture upon 

 pupse, it has been already noted, are decidedly un- 

 favourable, and kill many which would defy severe 

 frost and its accompanying dryness. Mildness in 

 the winter season is harmful to a certain portion 

 of the hibernating caterpillars. It is tiie general 

 habit of some of these to feed through the winter 

 at intervals, and others remain almost invariably 

 quiescent, waiting for the development of vegetable 

 life in spring. These latter are roused from their 

 torpor by an unseasonable geniulity. They seem to 

 require food, but, in some cases, there is none to be 

 had appropriate for them ; and they often die from 

 inanition, or are killed by some change of the 

 weather. Eggs also, which should remain un- 

 hatched until March and April supplied the leaves 

 needed by the larva;, are developed into life in 

 Eebruary, or even in January, and tlie result is 

 necessarily the death of the particular breeds. So 

 that, looking at the matter from a hoitieultural 

 point of view, the gardener, if he grumbles for 

 some reasons at a wet and mild winter, has also 

 reason for satisfaction thereat, in the probable 

 diminution of the number of caterpillars which will 

 annoy him in the following summer. — /. It. S. C. 



BOTANY. 



Insect Fertilization. — A whole acre of mig- 

 nonette would not emit more perfume than a single 

 plant of the Fan Palm of the Rio Negro {Mauritia 

 carard). In approaching one of these plants througli 

 the thick forest, the sense of hearing would, per- 

 haps, give the first notice of its proximity, from 

 the merry hum of winged insects which its scented 

 flowers had drawn together to feast on the honey, 

 and to transport tlie pollen of the male to the female 

 plants ; for it is chiefly dioecious species of palms 

 that have such sweet flowers. The absence of 

 odoriferous flowers from the grasses seems to show 

 that insect aid is not needed for effecting their 

 fecundation, but does not render its accidental con- 

 currence a whit less unlikely. If the flowers of the 

 grasses be sometimes fertilized in the bud, it is 

 probably exceptional, like the similar cases re- 

 corded of orchids, and many other families. — A. 

 Spruce. 



Peculiarities in the Dock. — Being an ardent 

 lover of wild flowers, and something of a botanist, 

 I venture to think that a few details of my botanical 

 experience may not prove uninteresting to your 

 readers. During the last two summers I have given 

 my attention to a group of plants which I had 

 hitherto entirely disregarded as too uninteresting 

 to be worth more than a glance ; but as I had set 

 myself the task of making coloured drawings of all 

 the wild flowers I could meet wiih, and having 

 transferred to the pages of my book of " Wild 

 Flowers '"' ail the more attractive flowers in my 

 neighbourhood, I could no longer neglect this 

 hitherto despised tribe, the Dock {Rumex). I there- 

 fore set to work at them ; but to draw them was 

 no easy task, and to name them, when drawn, still 

 harder. The varieties seemed endless, no two speci- 

 mens appeared exactly alike ; and when I thought 

 I had decided on the name of a species, I could not 

 satisfy myself the next day that I was right. When 

 I mention my difiiculties more specifically, perhaps 

 those who best deserve the title of botanists will 

 acknowledge that these diffieulties do exist, and 

 those who are only students and beginners may find 

 these diifieulties lessened for them if I relate as 

 briefly as I can the course and result of my own 

 observations. When we turn to any botanical wwrk 

 and look at the descriptions given of any species of 

 the tribe Bumex, we find that the tubercles on the 

 petals are a very distinctive feature of the plant ; 

 but in no botanical work that I am acquainted with 

 have I found any remark in reference to what stage 

 of the flowering process the tubercle is developed, 

 I venture, therefore, to offer my own experience and 

 observations made on this point. In the early part 

 of July I found a very fine specimen of one of the 

 water-docks on the edge of the river Stour, within 



