42 



HARDWICKE'S S\CIENCE-GOSSIP. 



sunshine, I am inclined to ascribe to it the latter 

 characteristic. The roundish hole of entrance and 

 exit in the case or shell of this nest was on one side 

 down towards the bottom of it ; in the small nest 

 taken on the 3rd inst., it was immediately in the 

 centre beneath. 



In the same dyke, at no great distance from the 

 site of the above nest and each other, are two nests 

 of the V. vulgaris, whilst somewhat farther off is a 

 third nest. All the three are strong and in full 

 vigour, as are also several other nests of the V. 

 vulgaris known of. The latter species of wasp is 

 (the V, Gcrmaiiica, perhaps, excepted) the most agres- 

 sive and persistent in its attacks upon intruders. If 

 you once disturb it at its nest, you cannot again with 

 safety tamper with, or indeed go very near the nest ; 

 and in its attacks upon an aggressor it hurls itself, as 

 it were, against him, and sticks to him : it has to be 

 struck off, and is apparently wholly fearless. 



Charles Robson. 



Elswick, Neivcasle-ufion- Tync. 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Mr. C. H. Hinton, B.A., has written a pleasant 

 and lively] brochure, entitled, " Scientific Romances : 

 What is the Fourth Dimension ? " 



In the " English Mechanic" we are pleased to see 

 that Dr. Van Hewick and Dr. Royston Pigott speak 

 in the highest terms of Mr. E. Hinton's " Diatome- 

 scope " as an aid in defining the markings and 

 strire on diatoms, &c. 



We have received No. 2 of "The Albertian," a 

 magazine got up by the boys of Framlingham College. 

 The ability which we noted in the first member is 

 equally evident in the present. The interest dis- 

 played in science is very striking. Two of the 

 papers, "A Scene in Autumn," and "A Holiday 

 Week in Derbyshire," show considerable natural 

 history knowledge. 



Professor Mobius says that flying-fish are 

 incapable of flying, for the simple reason that the 

 muscles of their pectoral fins are not large enough to 

 bear the weight of the body aloft in the air, and that 

 what has been mistaken for a rapid muscular 

 movement of the fins is only a vibration of the 

 elastic membrane. 



A statement is made in the "Colonial Mail" to the 

 effect that insects avoid the ground where tomatoes 

 grow. Have any of our readers observed this ? If 

 it is correct, the information is valuable. 



The recent appearances of the sun-glows, at 

 precisely the same period as last year, is regarded by 

 Professor Landerer as an argument in favour of their 

 cosmical rather than of their volcanic origin. 



Professor Ray Lankester maintains that the 

 "comma bacillus " of Dr. Koch is not a bacillus at 

 all, but merely the segments of a Spirillum, the 

 result of the breaking of a spirillum into little pieces, 

 each piece corresponding to a turn of the spire. 



The Trunk Telephone Line between London and 

 Brighton was opened the day before Christmas Day, 

 and was duly celebrated by a dinner at each end, so 

 that the two dinner-parties enjoyed each other's 

 speeches, songs, &c, through the mediumship of the 

 line. 



Sir Lyon Playfield will be the President of the 

 British Association Meeting, which will meet at 

 Aberdeen on September 9th. 



Mr. E. B. Knobel, Secretary of the Royal Astro- 

 nomical Society, writes from Booking, Braintree, 

 under date January 6 : " Encke's comet readily 

 picked up this evening, near computed place ; faint, 

 with slight condensation of light." 



At a meeting of the Superintendents of National 

 Education, at Washington, Dr. B. Joy Jeffries read 

 a paper on colour blindness, urging that the three 

 primaries are red, green, and violet ; that blindness 

 to the latter is so rare that practically colour blind- 

 ness means blindness to red or green ; urging also 

 the danger of persons with such deficiency being 

 employed in many occupations, and the necessity of 

 an experimental method of finding it out. 



Colonel Berkeley who has lately returned from 

 the Andaman Islands, fished up, with the assistance 

 of sixteen men, a very large bivalve Tridacna 

 gigautea shell, which weighed 232-lbs. The inside 

 measurement of one side of the shell] is 1 yard 

 6 inches, and of the outside 1 yard 8 inches. The 

 inside is of a beautiful delicate white. The mantle 

 of the fish, when taken out, was a beautiful blue 

 colour, and the fish made a sufficient meal for the 

 sixteen men and their families. The shell is now in 

 England. 



The wing of a fossil cockroach has been found in 

 the Silurian sandstones of Jurques, Calvados, France. 



Mr. W. H. Charman writes to say that on 

 Christmas Day last, he found a total of no fewer 

 than 90 species of plants in flower (of which he has 

 sent us a list), within a radius of a quarter of a mile 

 from Heath End nursery. On the preceding Christ- 

 mas Day he found 75 species in bloom in the same 

 locality. 



A proposal to connect Sicily with the mainland 

 by a submarine railway from Messina to Reggio has 

 been made by the Engineering Society of Venice. 



It is a notable sign of the progress which science 

 is making in the public mind to observe that this 

 year the Times and other newspapers gave a long 

 review of scientific discovery in 1884. 



