Juke 1, 1870.1 



HARDWICKE'S SCIEN CE-GOSSIP. 



131 



under stones at Marple Wood, in Cheshire, prove 

 to be^ the Helix glabra of Studer, Fer. Prodr. No. 

 215. Z. glaber has a wide range on the Continent, 

 from Normandy (where I have taken it), through 

 France, Savoy, Switzerland, Germany, and Dal- 

 matia, to Epirus in Greece. I also found the same 

 species in 1816 at Grassmere, aud in 1S57 at Bar- 

 mouth, but had overlooked it. Mr. Rogers's speci- 

 mens being alive, I subjoin a description of the 

 animal. 



Body dark bluish-grey, striped like a zebra on 

 each side in front, and irregularly mottled behind ; 

 in one of the specimens the hinder part of the foot 

 is minutely speckled with yellowish-brown dots; 

 two narrow and slight parallel grooves run along 

 the neck from the head to the upper lip of the shell ; 

 the surface is more or less wrinkled, and has a few 

 large but indistinct lozenge-shaped markings : 

 mantle very thick and dark at the mouth of the 

 shell, over which its edges are folded: tentacles, 

 upper pair rather long, and finely granulated ; 

 lower pair very short : eyes small, placed on the 

 upper part, but not at the tips, of the tentacular 

 bulbs : respiratory orifice round, occupying the 

 centre of the pallial fold: foot very long and 

 slender ; the sole appears as if separated from the 

 upper part of the foot, being defined by a darker 

 line: slime thin and nearly transparent. I could 

 not detect any smell of garlic (so peculiar to 

 Z. alliarius), although I frequently irritated the 

 animals. 



The shell is three times the size of that of its 

 nearest congener, Z. alliarius, and is of a reddish- 

 brown or waxy colour ; the whorls are more convex 

 or swollen ; the lower part of the shell is not so 

 much arched, the mouth is larger, the umbilicus is 

 smaller and narrower, and the colour underneath is 

 sometimes whitish. — Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 

 April, 1870. 



THE SCOTCH THISTLE. 



A CORRESPONDENT wishes for information 

 -^-*- as to which of the thistle tribe is the true 

 Scotch thistle. This is really a puzzler. If we are 

 to place any reliance on the figures which profusely 

 ornament many of our old Scotch books, or take 

 as true representatives of any natural plant those 

 vile excrescences which the older Scotch architects 

 have stuck up in every possible shape and form, as 

 finales to doors and windows, gable-heads and door- 

 ways — a taste which some of the modern professors 

 of the art seem so very anxious to copy — or if we 

 trust to the taste of sculptors in stone or engravings 

 in metals, we must conclude that the species from 

 which one and all of these thistles have been taken 

 are either now lost to the flora of Scotland, or else 

 that the representations are as great a piece of 

 imaginative caricature as the animal with one horn 



that forms one of the supporters of the Scotch 

 crown. Many different species have been dignified 

 with the name of Scotch thistle. It is probable, 

 say some authorities, that a common species such 

 as Carduus lanceolatus is most deserving the name. 

 Some' have fixed on doubtful native species, such 

 as Silybum Marianum and Onopordon acanthium. 

 Neither of these is, however, reconcilable with 

 history. S. Marianum is appropriated by the Roman 

 Catholic Church, who say the white marking on the 

 foliage is commemorative of milk of the Virgin 

 Mary. 0. acanthium is not only, like the last, a 

 doubtful original species to Scotland, but like C. 

 lanceolatus, of much too great a height ; for one 

 historian says, that, after the landing of Queen 

 Scota, she reviewed her troops, and being fatigued, 

 retired, and on sitting down was pricked by a 

 thistle ; from which circumstance she adopted it as 

 the arms of her new country, with the motto, 

 "Nemo me impune lacessit." Another says, on 

 the eve of an attack by the Danes, one of the enemy 

 having trod on a thistle, cried out with pain, which 

 gave intimation to the Scots of their near presence, 

 and hence the thistle became dignified as the arms 

 of the country. With these two exceptions, we 

 meet with no other reference to a matter of equal 

 importance, in an historical point of view, with that 

 of the legends in connection with the Coronation 

 Stone, which all historians have treated on with 

 great minuteness. However, if any reliance may be 

 placed on the authorities above given, it is quite 

 clear that it must have been a low-growing species 

 like Cnicus acaulie ; for, whether we take into con- 

 sideration the accident to the Queen, or the bare- 

 footed Dane, or the configuration of the flower head 

 itself, it more closely resembles the representations 

 we find on many of the sculptured stones than 

 either of the others. Some have supposed it to be 

 Carduus acanthoides ; but this, as well as all the 

 rest, is less formidably furnished with those strong, 

 spiny scales with which the receptacle of Silybum 

 Marianum is so amply provided. This circumstance, 

 while it agrees better with those sculptured repre- 

 sentations found on the oldest parts of Stirling 

 Castle, Linlithgow Palace, or Holyrood House, 

 especially with one on the top of a garden doorway 

 opposite the new fountain in front of the entrance 

 to the latter, which is more like the head of Oynara 

 Scolymus, the globe artichoke, a native of the south 

 of Europe, than any thistle in the world. Uncertain 

 as we are regarding the species of our national 

 emblem, or even of its being a native, we are no 

 more so than the English are regarding the species 

 of rose they have adopted. No double roses existed 

 in Britain at the period it was introduced into the 

 national escutcheon ; therefore, it must have been 

 borrowed from the French, who, even in their turn, 

 cannot now tell what species of iris their fleur-de-lis 

 is meant to represent. Nor are the Irish agreed as 



