MISCELLANY. 



633 



sheets of blotting-paper, which are impreg- 

 nated with the hyposulphite, from having 

 served the same purpose before, the white 

 points will inevitably make their appear- 

 ance. 



Aiidsat Ferus. At a late meeting of 

 the Torrey Botanical Club of this city, Dr. 

 J. Newberry exhibited a fossil fern which 

 he had obtained from the Miocene forma- 

 tion in the western part of the continent. 

 It was an Onoclca, and was not distinguish- 

 able from the recent Linnaean species, Ono- 

 clea scnsib'dls. This certainly carries back 

 the lineage of our common sensitive fern to 

 a very ancient period. 



At the same meeting of the club, there 

 was also exhibited a fine specimen of that 

 singular plant which grows parasitic on the 

 roots of the pine-tree, and is hence called, 

 in the Eastern States, pine-drops. The plant 

 is rare at the Eist, and seldom attains the 

 height of two feet. The specimen exhibited 

 was four feet high. 



Onr Native Birds acquiring New Habits. 



In a late number of the American Nat- 

 uralist, Prof. Samuel Lockwood gives an 

 interesting account of that beautiful bird 

 known as the golden robin, or Baltimore 

 oriole, in connection with one of our car- 

 penter-bees. He states that last June large 

 numbers of these humble-bees were found 

 under the horse-chestnut trees, then in full 

 bloom, in the campus of Rutgers College. 

 The strange fact was, that every one of 

 these insects was decapitated, and the heads 

 were lying around with the bodies ; further, 

 it appears that every one of the headless 

 bees was a stingless male. The professor 

 worked out the case with much patient per- 

 severance, and found to his surprise that 

 this wholesale slaughter was the work of four 

 orioles. Another fact which astonished him 

 was, that the bodies of all these insects were 

 empty, the viscera having been drawn out 

 at the ring-like opening where the head had 

 been neatly snipped by the birds. The 

 process was to catch the bees while hover- 

 ing at the ball-like opening of the flowers. 

 After severing the head, they extracted the 

 viscera for the sake of the honey-sac. Sev- 

 eral very interesting considerations are 

 brought out in the course of the article 



such as the acquired taste ; the birds had 

 found out that honey was nice. Wa3 it not 

 singular, too, that they had learned that it 

 could be got in such a manner ? And there 

 was also the curious fact that the bird con- 

 fined its marauding to the white-headed bees, 

 the stingless males thus carrying on his 

 terrible work with impunity, and almost 

 wantonness, as it contented itself with 

 simply the honey-bearing sac. 



Prof. Lockwood also notes a curious 

 change of habit in the kingbird. Speaking 

 of the wonderfully plucky manner of this 

 courageous little bird in attacking crows 

 and other large birds, as securing the gen- 

 eral admiration, he says that for himself 

 that admiration has gone down to zero, as 

 he has noticed that the bird has not any true 

 knightly qualities, but can do some very 

 mean things. The professor then instances 

 a case in which a pair of robins had built a 

 nest in a tree so near by that the process 

 could be watched from the house. A pair 

 of kingbirds kept all the time near, and 

 watched progress with genuine royal in- 

 dolence, and, when all was finished, with 

 kingly impudence took possession. The 

 rightful owners made but a feeble effort to 

 resist this invasion. The kingbirds retained 

 possession until their young were raised. 



More than a year ago, Prof. Lockwood 

 likewise called attention to the fact that the 

 great butcher-bird, or Northern shrike, con- 

 trary to all precedent, had begun to visit 

 in winter the cities where the European 

 sparrows have become naturalized. The 

 bird in summer collects grasshoppers, small 

 lizards, etc., and impales them on the spines 

 of the locust or other trees, eating them at 

 its leisure. He notices the case in which a 

 shrike in its winter visit gibbeted a sparrow 

 in, the city by putting its neck in the crotch 

 of a small branch of a larch, and then, hav- 

 ing knocked in the top of its head, the bird 

 extracted its victim's brains. 



Paper as a Bailding-Material. An Eng- 

 lish company prepare a water-proof mate- 

 rial out of paper-pulp, or any fibrous sub- 

 stance, by saturating it with ammoniated 

 copper solution a digest of copper scraps 

 in concentrated ammonia. This treatment 

 dissolves the fibres and renders the paper 

 impervious to water. A number of sheets 



