IJO 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Just give him an early worm and see what he 

 does. 



Sing his thanks, you think ? No, indeed, if he does 

 iiing, it is simply to ask for more, but usually he 

 remains silent. 



" O early worm, O early worm ! 

 Sweet and toothsome art thou 

 With the dew upon thee, 

 In the glory of the morn ! 

 There is nothing sweeter than 



The early worm 

 With the dew upon him in the 



Glorj' of the morn 1 " 



That is his song ; and he will go on singing that for 

 hours, until the early worm turns up. He knows no 

 more, poor bird, and what is worse, wants to know 

 nothing more. 



He is ignorant : very, very ignorant ; and he is 

 liappy : very, ver}' happy in his ignorance. 



His total vocabulary does not exceed some sixty 

 words ; whilst the sparrow, often runs over into 

 thousands, especially when he is in a rage, and at a 

 loss, then he invents a dozen new adjectives on the 

 .--pur of the moment. Besides the first bird sticks 

 superstitiously to his fifty words, whilst the sparrow 

 is simply avaricious of new ideas and new words. 



Let a sparrow invent some taking phrase, and it is 

 immediately taken into the bosom of the language, 

 and in a few weeks in common use by all alike. 



I remember a sparrow nicknamed a pea-shooter, 

 but what would be translated "quick-joy," because of 

 ' the delight of eating the peas, after the rapid flight. 

 Now every sparrow — even the rather stupid hedge- 

 sparrow — speaks of many other things under that 

 name — as "rain-drops." 



One of the pleasantest afternoons I ever spent was 

 passed in listening to a trial by rooks. 



One of the rooks was accused of playing the decoy- 

 duck with some of his fellows, and of being in league 

 M'ith certain farmers ; and of thus causing many of 

 Jiis comrades to adorn the inside of a horrible 

 ^chamber, called a pigeon-pie. 



The defence was, that he could not understand the 

 farmers, nor the farmers him ; secondly that he gained 

 nothing by doing this great wickedness, as was evident, 

 if he did do it. But to this was replied that he was 

 allowed a free entrance into a granary stocked with 

 fresh grain ; and that was evidence conclusive. 



The poor fellow, whom I pitied greatly, tried to 

 show that he had found a hole in and offered to show 

 it the[ company generally ; and this gained him many 

 friends ; indeed I thought he was safe. No, his 

 ■enemies were too fiercely determined ; they reminded 

 tlie folk present of a new-sown field, and demanded 

 an instant verdict. 



That decided it, and he was instantly found guilty 

 and pecked to death. 



But there are other much more kindly views of 

 bird-life to be gained than the one I have described. 



I remember one very affecting incident : a small 



bird of the wren tribe had been severely hurt and was 

 still very ill when the day for the annual migration 

 came ; indeed, amongst all the denizens of the thicket, 

 a general belief was expressed that the poor little 

 wren must be left behind to winter in the land of 

 snow and frost. 



His mate nearly lost her head in the agony of the 

 separation, for there were young ones, and one at 

 least had to go to look after them. There he stood 

 divided between love and duty ; should he leave his 

 dear companion of the summer, or should he leave 

 his young ones to go forth and die perhaps in a 

 foreign land ? 



And so he flew from tree to tree in wild terror and 

 despair. 



At length there came slowly two great cranes 

 across the wide expanse, and with a mad hope in his 

 heart he advanced and humbly besought their help. 



They were kind-hearted creatures ; and on his 

 promising to keep a good look-out for frogs, they 

 took the wee wren under their wing, and carried her 

 along with her family into the-far away country. 



Happy wren and happier cranes ! 



LAC {COCCUS LA CCA). 



By H. DURRANT. 



THIS insect, like its congener the cochineal insect, 

 belongs to the order Hemiptera. Its habits and 

 economy are nearly identical with it. When a colonj' 

 of several males and females select a branch of a tree 

 for their home, they puncture it, and a milky exuda- 

 tion follows, in which they are soon entombed, and 

 which furnishes them with both food and shelter. It 

 forms irregular dark-coloured, resinous masses on the 

 twigs of the trees which it surrounds, and which is 

 gradually added to until they are sometimes nearly 

 an inch in diameter. The trees most usually affected 

 are the Fkiis Indica and F. religiosa which both 

 abound in a milky juice. When the season arrives, 

 the natives collect the encrusted twigs, which in this 

 state are known commercially as "stick-lac." It 

 contains about seven per cent, of resin and one- 

 twentieth part of colouring matter. To separate the 

 sticks, colouring and other foreign matter, the stick- 

 lac is placed in large vats of hot water which melts 

 the resin and thus liberates all impurities. It is then 

 taken out and put into oblong bags of cotton, and a 

 man standing at each end of the bag holds it over a 

 charcoal fire. By this plan the resin is liquefied and 

 drops through and falls on to the smooth stems of the 

 Banyan tree, placed purposely to catch it. This 

 flattens it out into thin plates, and it is then known to 

 us as shell-lac. If the colouring matter has not been 

 well washed out the resin is left of a very dark colour, 

 thus we find in the lac-market, orange, garnet, and 

 liver varieties. That which most nearly approaches 

 to a light brown colour being the best. 



