HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



21 



Museum ('Natural History), and to the British 

 Museum, Bloomsbury. On the formei" occasion, an 

 address was presented by the president, Dr. Henry 

 Hicks, on behalf of the members, to Sir Richard 

 Owen, on his retirement from the directorship of that 

 institution. A valuable address was then given by 

 Dr. Henry Woodward, on Fossil Fishes. The visit 

 to the British Museum was the occasion of " a demon- 

 stration " on the marbles and monumental stones, 

 illustrated by the collection in the Museum. 



A new Deposit of Pliocene Age at St. Erth, 

 Fifteen Miles east of the Land's End, Corn- 

 wall. — A valuable addition to British geology has just 

 been made by Mr. Searles Wood, in a communication 

 to the Geological Society. The deposit described 

 occurs about five miles north-east of Penzance, and 

 consists of a tenacious blue clay with shells, resting 

 on sand. Mr. Wood has got together upwards of 

 forty species of mollusca, inclusive of a few of which 

 only fragments have as yet occurred, and of several 

 minute species. Among these, besides some that are 

 apparently altogether new, are some particularly 

 characteristic species of the Red Crag not known 

 living, such as Cypraa {Trivia) avellana, Sow.; 

 Melampus pyramidalis, Sow.; and Nassa gramdata , 

 Sow. (or else N. granifera, Dujardin), as well as 

 other characteristic Crag species that still live, but 

 not north of the coast of Spain, such as Turritella 

 triplicate!, Brocchi (T. incrassata, Sow.), and 

 Ringicula buccinea, Brocchi. The most interesting 

 feature of the fauna, however, consists in the six 

 species of Nassa that the deposit has hitherto 

 yielded, of which all but one, N. granulata Sow. (or 

 granifera, Dujardin), are unknown from any forma- 

 tion of Northern Europe, and occur, whether in the 

 living or fossil state, only in the southern half of 

 Europe. N. conglobata, a species of a group near to 

 that of mutabilis, has occurred in the Red Crag ; but, 

 so far as the author is aware, neither that shell, nor 

 any of the group to which it belongs, has occurred 

 in any other formation of Northern Europe. One of 

 these is Nassa mutabilis, Linne, which now lives 

 throughout the Mediterranean, but outside that sea 

 north of Cadiz (lat. 36 30') ; and two others are 

 new species of this exclusively southern mutabilis 

 group. Another seems to be a rare Italian Upper- 

 Pliocene species of the reticulata group, N. reticostata, 

 Bellardi ; while the sixth is the Lower Pliocene and 

 Upper-Miocene species, N. scrrata, Brocchi. This 

 shell, in the variety of form it presents at St. Erth 

 (where it is one of the most frequent shells), seems to 

 connect the Red-Crag N. reticosa, Sow., with the 

 Italian N. serrata, while the shorter forms of it are 

 identical with the Italian Lower-Pliocene A 7- , emiliana, 

 Mayer. The fauna is altogether southern, no 

 exclusively Arctic shell having as yet occurred in it. 

 Mr. Wood regards the bed as clearly Pliocene, and 

 inclines to the opinion that it is rather Newer than 



Older Pliocene ; that is to say, it is coeval with the 

 Red Crag, but its affinities are more with the 

 Pliocene of Italy than with the Pliocene of the North 

 Sea region ; and this seems to show that during its 

 deposition there was no communication between the 

 Atlantic and the North Sea, except round the North 

 of Britain, the refrigeration of the water by the nine 

 degrees of latitude, through which Britain extends 

 northwards from St. Erth, preventing the access on 

 he Italian group of Nassa to that sea. 



Flint Hunting.— Remarkable "Finds." — 

 During the closing clays of November 1884, a party of 

 geologists, one lady and five gentlemen, under the 

 leadership of Mr. R. Law, of Walsden, paid a visit 

 to the flint deposits, on Midgely Moor, overlooking 

 Mytholmroyd village, and about five miles from 

 Halifax. On arriving at the place (a bare patch of 

 about an acre, from which the peat has been denuded, 

 exposing a bed of silver sand and angular stones, 

 capping flagstones of the second millstone grit rocks, 

 and near to which is a circular embankment of earth, 

 marked on the ordinance maps as a Roman mound 

 or remains of a Roman camp). The party made a 

 vigilant search for "about two hours, and were re- 

 warded by finding about forty specimens of flint. 

 Besides numerous chips and flakes, from 1 to 2 inches 

 long, and two or three chert and flint cores, a 

 beautiful flint arrow-head, well worked round the edge 

 but broken at the point, a scraper showing marks of 

 having been used, a rhomboidal flint was found ; also 

 a very rare specimen of flint thought to have been 

 used for carving on horns, &c, by the ancient flinf 

 makers. If valued by the scarcity, such instruments 

 were worth a few pounds at least. The party 

 decided to pay another and an early visit, hoping to 

 find a barbed arrow-head, similar to what has on a 

 former occasion been found here. — J. Fielding, 

 Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Life History of Mantis. —The mantis belongs 

 to the one carnivorous family of the orthoptera, 

 namely, the mantidae. The mantidre inhabit the hot 

 parts of Europe and the tropics ; one species, the 

 Mantis religiosa, is especially common in the south 

 of France, coming as far north as Fontainebleau. Its 

 name is derived from (j-ciptis, a prophet, because of its 

 reverential attitude whilst waiting for a victim. It 

 rears itself on its four hind legs, the thorax being 

 almost perpendicular, and the fore arms extended, 

 and thus remains motionless, except that its head 

 turns from side to side, until some unfortunate insect 

 comes by, when it is seized and devoured. The 

 mantis lays its eggs at the end of the summer in 

 rounded fragile capsules attached to the branches of 

 trees, but they do not hatch till the following summer. 

 When it leaves the egg the young one resembles its 

 parents ; differing only in size, and in having no 

 wings. After moulting four or five times it has 

 almost reached its full growth, and its wings begin 



