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HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OS SIP. 



own person, Divestinghimself of shoes and stockings, 

 he tucked up his trousers, and imitating the others 

 with regard to the Tii plant, he passed in a similar 

 manner through the fire without experiencing the 

 slightest inconvenience from the flames, which he 

 said played about his bare legs." — J. F. Crannvick. 



Mercurialis perennis.— At page 179 of 

 Science-Gossip for the present month, Mercurialis 

 perennis is written of as "sometimes eaten as a 

 vegetable," surely this is a mistake, the plant is very 

 poisonous, and it is well to caution your readers 

 against eating it ; the plant eaten as spinach is the 

 Mercury Goose-Foot, Chenopodiuvi Bonus Hcnricus, 

 belonging to the order Chenopodiace?e, which contains 

 many edible species, as orach, spinach, and beet. — 

 y. yejiner Weir. 



Abnormal Scabious. — I enclose a specimen 

 of scabious herewith, as it has none of the usual 

 compressed central florets on its disk. It may be 

 useful as an example of defective development. — 

 R. Ashingtoit Bullen. 



Var. of Lilium auratum. — Amongst a large 

 number of flowers of Lilium auratum last year, I 

 saw one which struck me as being rather peculiar ; 

 instead of the stigmas and styles being united in their 

 whole length, there was one style with its stigma 

 distinctly separate, and the other two had their styles 

 separate but were united by their stigmas. Is such a 

 case, may I ask, of rare occurrence? I preserved 

 the specimen in spirit. While writing this may I ask 

 what is the best book for a beginner on the study of 

 worms (Vermes) ? — Eldon Pratt. 



Archeology and Plant Traditions. — In an 

 address given during an excursion of the Essex Field 

 Club on August 8, Dr. J. E. Taylor made some 

 remarks, to which we invite the attention of archseo- 

 logical botanists. Speaking of their folklore, he said 

 .that many of the traditions concerning them were the 

 common property of Norwegian, "-Danish, German, 

 French, English, Spanish, Russian, Hungarian, and 

 other countries, and he expressed his belief that 

 these traditions were of Aryan origin, older even than 

 the evolution of European languages, and that they 

 were possibly distributed all over Europe during the 

 great Aryan emigration. In this way he connected 

 the popular names and folklore of common plants 

 with ethnological history. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Romano-British Camps. — At a meeting of the 

 Bournemouth Natural History Society at Badbury 

 Rings, near Wimborne, on June 27th, 1891, Dr. 

 Crespi, of Wimborne, 'said the whole neighbourhood 

 was deeply interesting to the antiquary ; Badbury, 

 the Castle Hill at Cranborne, and Dudsbury were a few 

 of the most interesting. Several questions of import- 

 ance would call for brief enquiry. These were : Who 



constructed these camps ? why were they formed ? 

 and what was the condition of the country at the 

 time? Badbury was puzzling. The Rings consist of 

 three bold and almost perfect embankments and three 

 ditches ; they are circular, cover eighteen acres, and 

 have two entrances, facing respectively east and west. 

 The innermost ring is often said to be Keltic, the 

 middle Roman, and the external Saxon or Anglo- 

 Saxon ; the extreme circumference is 1,738 yards. 

 Of the history of Badbury nothing is really known 

 except that, according to the "Saxon Chronicle" of 

 A.D. 901, the year of Alfred's death, his son and 

 successor, Edward the Elder, held it, while his 

 kinsman and rival Ethelwald was posted at Wim- 

 borne. Ethelwald, after stating that he would either 

 live or die at Wimborne, stole off by night to join the 

 Danes and Mercians in Northumbria. There is no 

 evidence that Badbury was the Mons Badonicus of 

 the early chroniclers. Few remains of interest have 

 been found at or near Badbury itself, with the excep- 

 tion of some coins — one, however, a beautiful gold 

 one, pieces of pottery, three swords, and a few bones. 

 The objection to Badbury, or rather the middle ring, 

 being a Roman encampment is that the Romans 

 usually constructed nearly square camps, with four 

 entrances, one in the middle of each of the four 

 faces ; but it did not follow that the Romans might 

 not have occupied Badbury for a time, utilising the 

 fortifications which they found here. To leave 

 Badbury and give a glance at other equally huge 

 earthworks in the neighbourhood of Wimborne, their 

 enormous size and the vast labour implied in throwing 

 them up, must not be overlooked. One could not 

 avoid the conclusion that the population of the 

 district must have been very large, not that of the 

 whole country, a widely different matter, but that of 

 the districts in which the camps are formed. General 

 Pitt Rivers agrees in this opinion, and believes that 

 in an age when much of the land was swampy, or 

 covered with dense and almost impenetrable primae- 

 val forests, dry downs would offer great attractions of 

 residence, and that the inhabitants would need only to 

 protect exposed parts, the forests or the rivers and 

 swamps sufficiently defending the other sides. Some 

 light. Dr. Crespi concluded, was thrown on the inhabi- 

 tants of the region by the discoveries made by General 

 Pitt Rivers ; most of the skeletons recently exhumed 

 at Rotherly being exceedingly small, the males ave- 

 raging 5ft. I "Sin., the females 4ft. 9in., while the 

 Anglo-Saxon skeletons at Winkelbury average for 

 males 5ft. 6'9 in., and the females 5ft. 2*3 in. 

 Some bronze age skeletons found by General Pitt 

 Rivers were of greater stature than the Anglo-Saxon 

 ones at Winkelbury. The almost entire absence of 

 round-headedness showed that a Roman strain was 

 rare among the people of the district. To sum up, 

 so little is at present known of the conditions of life 

 and of the people of the region, where most of the 

 huge camps, which give such interest to the district, 

 were constructed, that it is necessary to speak with 

 very great reserve, so that there is still the widest 

 possible latitude for the imagination. It is conse- 

 quently not astonishing that the highest authorities 

 do not agree. One thing is clear, that many of these 

 immense fortifications were thrown up after the 

 departure of the Romans, and the proof of this 

 important fact is that vast numbers of Roman coins 

 are found in the embankments often many feet below 

 the top of them, so that they must have been thrown 

 up with the earth with which the fortifications are 

 made ; others may be far more ancient than Roman 

 times. Future explorations may lead to important 

 discoveries, particularly at Badbury, which has in 

 great measure escaped the researches of Archaeologists. 



