16 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[Jan. 1, 1S69. 



ZOOLOGY. 



Sphinx Convolyuli.— The following paragraph 

 has been going the round of the papers :— " A lady 

 informs the Leamington Chronicle that she has 

 recently seen the humming-bird (!) in , Staffordshire, 

 Cheshire, and Warwickshire. The plumage was of 

 a reddish brown, speckled upon the back with 

 white." Is it not possible that S. convolvuli was 

 intended ? This rare moth has been taken this year 

 at High Wycombe and at Great Marlow. In the 

 latter neighbourhood several specimens of the pale 

 Clouded Yellow (Colias hyale) have been captured 

 this season. C. edusa has this season occurred in 

 the north and south of Buckinghamshire, and seems 

 to be gradually becoming more frequent in the 

 country.— B. 



The Cuckoo. — A correspondent of Science- 

 Gossip asks for information concerning the cuckoo, 

 and perhaps the following facts, mostly gathered 

 from Montague's "Dictionary of British Birds" (see 

 Introduction), may be interesting. The cuckoo 

 generally arrives about the first or second week of 

 April, but it has been heard on the 27th of March, 

 as already mentioned in Science-Gossip; but it 

 may be mentioned that one must be careful not to 

 be taken in by some small boy who endeavours to 

 April-fool his friends by imitating the notes so easily 

 copied. Montague observes that the cuckoo has 

 probably the power of retaining its eggs in the 

 ovarium, and the reasons for supposing so are the 

 following : — It would be often necessary, on account 

 of the difficulty of always finding a nest ready for 

 the cuckoo's egg, as it is highly improbable, if an 

 egg were laid in an unfinished nest, that a small 

 bird would continue incubating ; yet it has been 

 frequently observed that in cases where the cuckoo's 

 egg has been dropped the last into the nest it has 

 been the first to hatch. This causes a supposition 

 that the egg may have been retained in the ovarium, 

 and therefore is already partly incubated by the in- 

 ternal heat of the cuckoo's body. But, at the same 

 time, that the cuckoo is unable to retain the egg 

 beyond a certain time is evident from the account 

 given by Mr. Harper, of Norwich, who shot a 

 cuckoo with its egg in its beak searching on the 

 ground for a nest to deposit it in. This bird had 

 another egg in the ovarium of the same size, but 

 without the calcareous covering. This also proves a 

 question which has been much mooted — namely, that 

 the cuckoo does not " lay " her eggs, but deposits 

 them with her beak, and the nest has so often been 

 found in positions where the egg could not have 

 been laid, that it seems that there is no doubt about 

 the fact. The nests chosen appear to be of many 

 kinds — -amongst others, the hedge-sparrow's, red- 

 breast's, pied wagtail's, linnet's, redstark's, titlark's, 

 meadow pipits, and reed bunting's are mentioned. 



It has been stated that when the young cuckoo's 

 foster-parents are unable to feed it sufficiently, 

 they call all their neighbours to help them ; but it 

 is much more probable that they mistake it for 

 a hawk, and assemble round it as swallows and 

 other small birds do round rapacious birds. That 

 the young cuckoo throws other young birds out of 

 the nest after being a day or two old is undoubted; 

 but is it not possible that the old cuckoo may assist 

 at first, as it has been stated that a young cuckoo is 

 too weak for some days to stand up, much less to 

 throw out other birds ? Young cuckoos have not 

 been as yet successfully reared: the one kept longest 

 died, not inappropriately, on the 1st of April. 

 Should I have made any mistakes, 1 only hope any 

 other correspondent will kindly correct me, as I 

 shall be glad of all communications on the subject ; 

 and if any abler person will enter further into the 

 subject, he will oblige many who with myself take 

 much interest in the history of the cuckoo. — E. 

 G. W. 



Gnats. — About thirty years ago I remember an 

 extraordinary flight of gnats; it consisted of a 

 column about a foot in diameter, which rose nearly 

 perpendicularly to the height of about fifty feet ; 

 it waved about in the wind, lost its perpendicularity, 

 and was finally dispersed by the wind. The column 

 itself Mas at first tolerably compact, and contained 

 probably a quarter of a million of insects. A more 

 extraordinary flight occurred at Nottingham, on the 

 4th of October, 1S58 ; I say more extraordinary, 

 inasmuch as I have heard and read of single columns 

 of gnats, like that just mentioned, but I have never 

 seen or heard before or since of a flight similar to 

 that I am about to describe. It was between four 

 and five o'clock, as I was crossing the little river 

 Leen, below the castle rock on the western side, that 

 I noticed a series of perpendicular lines extending 

 for nearly a mile over the gardens along the bank of 

 the stream, giving to the clouds and the smoke of a 

 tall chimney in the distance a most extraordinary 

 appearance. On a nearer inspection I found these 

 lines to be columns of gnats. The base of each 

 column was about six feet from the ground, and 

 extended upward to the height of from twenty to 

 one hundred feet ; the columns were all cigar 

 shaped, that is, tapering at each end, and having a 

 diameter in the centre of about eighteen inches. 

 The columns appeared to be distant from each 

 other about thirty or forty feet, and extended over 

 a space about thirty or forty yards in width, by 

 nearly a mile in length. On standing beneath one 

 of the columns, the gnats were seen to be in rapid 

 motion, and performing the most complicated 

 gyrations, but constantly preserving the peculiar 

 cigar-shape, and not altering the position of the 

 columns, which appeared to be stationary. How 

 long they remained in that position I am uimble to 



