22 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



chisel and hammer he would insure" its base being 

 uninjured. I found some magnificent specimens at 

 Scarborough last summer, and perhaps some of your 

 readers can inform me whether cats are partial to such 

 things, for I brought them home, and one night, 

 thinking they would be benefited by a " low tide," I 

 placed two (one was a splendid fellow, the size of a 

 small plate) on a pane of glass on the floor. The 

 next morning every trace of them had vanished. Our 

 cat was believed to be out all night, but this is not 

 positively known. Has any one ever heard of cat or 

 dog eating a sea anemone ? It may interest some 

 collectors to know that I succeeded in getting about 

 twelve varieties at Biarritz this spring ; and, what is 

 perhaps more wonderful, they nearly all reached Eng- 

 land alive, and are even now in first-rate condition. 

 When it is considered that the unhappy creatures 

 made a tour of ten days with us after leaving the sea- 

 side, and had to endure a daily packing and unpack- 

 ing, spending a few hours in a tin box, and at night 

 placed in a basin and just covered with a little water 

 carried with us in a bottle, their constitutions cannot 

 be called delicate, especially as the last journey was 

 taken in a paper bag ! One bay at Biarritz was per- 

 fectly carpeted with the lovely Aiithea cereus of every 

 hue, and it was a matter of difficulty to walk ; but in 

 spite of all our exertions, we never could get them to 

 live two days. I know not why. We also found a 

 beautiful specimen of the Holothuria or sea cucumber, 

 and of a tiny bright blue and orange snail-like crea- 

 ture, which the sailors said was a sea-leech. Are 

 these rare ? We could not bring them with us to 

 England for want of space. I would only add in re 

 Tealia crassicornis, that unless the tank is a large one, 

 a single specimen is enough to keep. — C. E. R. 



Metropolitan Scientific Association. — The 

 twelfth session of this society was commenced on 

 October 22, when the president delivered the usual 

 introductory address to an appreciative audience. 

 The president mainly confined himself to the subject 

 of Light and its analysis, and gave an exposition of 

 the successive advances made in this branch of re- 

 search from the earliest to the more recent times. 

 On concluding, a cordial vote of thanks was passed, 

 and an adjournment made to November 26, when 

 Mr. A. P. Holden read a paper on " The Sun-spot 

 Cycle in relation to Magnetic and other Disturbances." 

 The M. S. A., which was established as long ago as 

 1866, has steadily progressed to the present time, 

 when it is now permanently settled in the city. 

 Meetings are held the third Tuesday in each month 

 at the ward schools, Aldersgate Street, E.C., and 

 the society invite visitors to any of these meetings. 

 Mr. C. Judd, A.K.C., F.R.A.S., is president, and 

 Mr. W. West, of 9 Ackerman Road, Brixton, S.W., 

 honorary secretary. Amongst the other officers are 

 many well-known microscopists, whose papers have 

 appeared several times in our columns. 



Cornus sanguinea. — Owing to the warmth and 

 moisture of the few weeks in the beginning of winter 

 which produced almost the conditions of a second 

 summer, the Cornus sanguinea of this neighbour- 

 hood came out into full blossom for a second time 

 last year. The flowers which are on last season's 

 wood were in no way different from those that blos- 

 somed on the same plants last June and July. Is this 

 unusual ? — J. S., Luton. 



Starlings and Larks. — The starling has often 

 been held up as a bird of immaculate character. I 

 am therefore sorry to state that I have last season 

 observed him plundering red currants as diligently as 

 his neighbours, the blackbird and the thrush. He has 



also a taste for cherries. Still the benefits which he 

 confers are vastly greater than the injury which he 

 occasions, and I much regret that, to please such 

 sapient bodies as the London gun clubs, he has been 

 excluded from the protection — such as it is — of the 

 Wild Birds' Preservation Act. The skylark is also a 

 corn-eater. I have seen him distinctly at a very short 

 distance hard at work in an experimental plot of 

 wheat. It is remarkable, as a proof of the intelligence 

 of birds, how soon they detect the harmlessness of a 

 scarecrow, and how often such devices have to be 

 changed if they are really to protect fruit or grain. 

 The gardener in charge of the experimental plots 

 above-mentioned tells me that nothing is of much use 

 for more than two days. — J. IV. Slater. 



Sea Anemones. — In answer to your correspond- 

 ent's ("C. E. R.") queries respecting sea anemones, 

 I have no special treatment for Bimodes getumacea ; 

 I have also found them very difficult to keep. The two 

 I now possess have been in my tank nearly two years, 

 and are the survivors of five I had from Torquay (one 

 being the parent of the young ones mentioned in my 

 notes on page 191) ; the other three dwindled away, as 

 described by " C. E. R." at periods varying from 

 three weeks to six months. With reference to feeding 

 the young ones (which I do once a week), I found it 

 a very difficult matter at first, but it is to be managed 

 with patience and care. The method I adopt is as 

 follows. I remove the young "ferns" into an old- 

 fashioned wine-cooler holding about a quart of water, 

 and keep them in a quiet place, where they get a 

 tolerable amount of light ; visit them several times on 

 feeding days, and when I find any of them open, I 

 drop a very small piece of mussel into the water and 

 guide it gently with a thin piece of stick until it drops 

 on the expanded disk, when it is soon devoured ; if 

 the first piece happens to miss the disk, I try a second 

 or third, and so on until all are fed, when I syringe 

 the water, which brings the pieces not eaten to the 

 surface, and they are then easily removed. I find, 

 after a few weeks of this treatment, the young ones 

 feed readily off a stick the same as the full-grown 

 ones, and I then put them back into the tank. I have 

 also reared B. gemmacea and S. bellis in one of my 

 aquaria, which is a glass fern dish (16 in. diameter), 

 having a rim about i\ inches from the top, on 

 which rim I place the young anemones, where they 

 are easily fed with a stick, being only just covered 

 with water. I have now in my tank several young 

 S. miniata and Dianthus plumosus, produced by 

 spontaneous division, in a very flourishing condition. 

 — C. A. Grimes, Dover. 



A White Rook. — While walking in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Dursley, in October, I noticed, at a 

 distance of a quarter of a mile or more, a white bird 

 walking in a ploughed field among a large number 

 of rooks. Taking it to be a sea-gull, I approached 

 the field, and found that the bird in question was a 

 rook without a single dark mark on any part of its 

 plumage, as far as I could discern at about a gunshot 

 off. — C. \V. Carrington. 



Testacella Haliotidea, &c. in Notts. — Per- 

 haps it may interest the readers of Science-Gossip 

 to know that Testacella haliotidea has been taken in 

 this county. I have taken four specimens, and seen 

 others, from which I conclude it has established itself 

 here. I believe, from inquiries I have made, that this 

 is the first time this species has been recorded from 

 Notts, if not as far north as here ; and probably it has 

 been introduced with herbaceous plants at some time. 

 Mr. Tate, in his " Land and Freshwater Mollusks of 

 Great Britain," says: "This species is found in 



