HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



195 



her slip, they flew ; and as we went out I watched 

 beyond the pier-heads, and across the broad stream, 

 their swift-winding loop-ribands of motion, down 

 close to it, cutting and intersecting. Though I had 

 seen swallows all my life, it seemed as though I never 

 before realised their peculiar beauty and character in 

 the landscape. Some time ago, for an hour, in a huge 

 old country barn, watching the birds flying, I recalled 

 the twenty-second Book of the Odyssey, where Ulysses 

 slays the suitors, bringing them to cclaircissemcnt ; 

 and Minerva, swallow-bodied, darts up through the 

 spaces of the hall, sits high on a beam, looks com- 

 placently on the show of slaughter, and feels in her 

 element, exulting, joyous." 



Who would not be thankful for the giftie that 

 should confer the power to see things thus ? Who 

 will not love the swift-flying birds the more when he 

 has noticed the rhythmic motion lof its wings and 

 body, or watched it forming its graceful loop-ribands 

 over the water ? 



Turn from Whitman to Thoreau. Do not carry 

 with you the prejudice which the critic and reviewer 

 have together within your minds by their unapprecia- 

 tive allusions, but open Walden and turn over the 

 pages till your come to the Pond. " It is like molten 

 glass, cooled but not congealed, and the few notes 

 in it are pure and beautiful, like the imperfections in 

 glass. From a hill-top you can see a fish leap in 

 almost any part ; for not a pickerel and shiner picks 

 an insect from this smooth surface, but it manifestly 

 disturbes the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is 

 wonderful with what elaborateness this simple fact 

 is advertised — this piscine murder will out — and 

 from my distant perch I distinguish the circling 

 undulations when they are half-a-dozen rods in 

 diameter. You can even detect a water-bug (Gyrinus) 

 ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a 

 quarter of a mile off" ; for they furrow the water 

 slightly and make a conspicuous ripple bounded by 

 two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it with- 

 out rippling it perceptibly .... How peaceful the 

 phenomena of the lake ! " 



After all what is science for, if it be not to bring 

 man and nature to embrace each other rapturously, 

 lovingly, responsively ? And how can this be accom- 

 plished so long as we have only one language, and 

 that the most repugnant and repulsive to popular 

 taste, the language of text-books — with which to put 

 the one on terms of familiarity with the other ? Our 

 poets can do, and have done a great deal. Long- 

 fellow's " forest primeval," Tennyson's wild flowers, 

 Wordsworth's nature worship, have touched more 

 hearts with a love for the beautiful and sublime than 

 all your Manuals of Botany, Popular Histories of 

 Science, and other well-meaning, but utterly unpalat- 

 able rechauff'es of natural history. 



Are we not after all getting back again to the days 

 of Pliny, of Theophrastus, and of Dioscorides ? What 

 a delightful rusticity there is about the former writer 



as he mixes rape, parsnip, and squills, with mush- 

 rooms, madder, and cucumber all in one book, 

 fringing his curiously wrought tapestry with marvellous 

 facts relating to flax, and closing with instructions on 

 the art of watering a garden ! Your man of science 

 scorns all such sublunary things as these latter, and 

 for the former, he would have you put an impassable 

 gulf between the crucifers and umbelifers, the 

 cryptogams and phanerogams, the acotyledons and 

 dicotyledons — not to mention others. 



It is pleasant to know that in our own land the 

 new-world idea is progressing. I should not like to 

 appear invidious, but cannot forbear to remark that 

 if America has her Burroughs, and Thoreau, as well 

 as her Dawson and Gray (dead, yet speaking), we 

 have our Hulme and Knight, Taylor and Worsely- 

 Denison, as m'cU as our Owen and Huxley. The 

 one class honourably represent our naturalists, the 

 other our nature-lovers, and while we look to the 

 former for discoveries, systems, skeletons, we must give 

 a warm welcome to the latter as they come forth into 

 the open air, divested of all professional dignity, and 

 begin to clothe the bare skeleton — "Can these dry 

 bones live ? " — with flesh and beauteous form. Every 

 year is bringing the public into closer sympathy with 

 nature, and when once the eye is opened to see, and 

 the ear to understand the picture and the rhythm, but 

 not till then, we may hope to find among the folk, a 

 due appreciation of science and her exponents. 



ON THE BURROWING HABITS OF THE 

 GENUS TESTACELLA, Cuvier. 



By C. D. HoRSMAN, B.A. 



HAVING been much interested in the observa- 

 tions of Messrs. L. E. Adams, W. E. 

 CoUinge, F. Rhodes, and B. Tomlin, which have 

 lately appeared in the Science-Gossip and "Natu- 

 ralist," I venture to forward some observations of my 

 own on the above genus, which differ slightly from 

 those of the above-named writers. 



In speaking of T. haliotidea, Mr. Collinge says he 

 has found it at a depth of from four to five feet, and 

 mentions that Mr. Quilter found T. scutulum at a 

 depth of eighteen inches. Dr. Jeffrey's mention of 

 T. matigeinoi being from personal observation is open 

 to question. Mr. Tomlin says he has found this 

 last-named species from six to twelve inches below 

 the surface. 



I have carefully observed these three species, but 

 have no record of ever having found any of them 

 below twelve inches, and in the majority of cases 

 only five or six inches below the surface. I have never 

 noticed any "clean cut hole," as mentioned by 

 Mr. Tomlin ; all I have observed have generally 

 commenced to burrow by burying themselves in the 

 loose surface soil. I should like to know if they have 

 ever been observed to use the burrows of earthworms, 



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