HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



135 



OBSERVATORY TROUGH. 



DR. GILES'S arrangement for making a trough 

 for watching animal and vegetable organisms, 

 seems to me to supply a want for a simple apparatus 

 of this kind ; therefore I beg to intrude on your notice 

 what I think will make the apparatus as useful, but 

 so simple, that any one can make half a dozen in an 



it was a valve, not a frustule, but luckily the hoop 

 or cingulum was still attached to it. In this position 

 it was very easy to see the arrangement of the puncta 

 on raised wedge-shaped radiating bands, and that 

 the cingulum also was adorned with circles of puncta. 

 As my son was with me, who is a tolerable draughts- 

 man, though nodiatomist, I asked him to sit down and 

 draw exactly what he saw under the microscope. He 



Fig. 94. — a, wire bent as shown at B, to slide on glass slip far 

 enough for a to press on cover glass. 



hour or less without extraneous aid. I append a 

 drawing ; the clips that keep the glass cover on 

 are simply a piece of brass wire bent to fit the slide 

 (on a piece of iron). The arms of this can be bent 

 to have sufficient power to hold the cover glass 

 well in position. 



R. Hawkins. 



A BEAUTIFUL DIATOM. 



AMONG the various genera of the Diatomacese, 

 perhaps there is not one that is more beautiful, 

 interesting and puzzling, than that of Stictodiscus. 

 Puzzling, because of the curious way in which the 

 numerous puncta, radiating more or less from centre 

 to circumference, seem to be imbedded in the silex of 

 the valves, so that it is most difficult to ascertain when 

 their correct forms, or their relative position with 

 regard to the surfaces of the valve is obtained. 



The other day, in looking over a general balsam 

 mount of the St. Marcia deposit, I came across a 

 specimen of Stictodiscus Californicus, which may be 

 considered the typical species of the genus. There 

 were of course many on the slide, but this particular 

 one was tilted up at an angle of some thirty degrees ; 



Fig. 95. — Stictodiscus Californicus (tilted position). X too. 



did so, without any prompting from me, but I can 

 vouch for the accuracy of the sketch, which I send 

 for publication in Science-Gossip, as it may be 

 interesting to many of its readers. 



Fred. H. Lang. 



MY GARDEN PETS. 



By E. H. Robertson. 



Part III. 



MANY there are who firmly believe that bees 

 are attracted by the colours of flowers, a 

 belief in which I need scarcely say, I do not share, a 

 life-long observation having led me to an exactly 

 opposite conclusion. Indeed, as a set off to the few 

 unreliable experiments occasionally recorded, proofs 

 to the contrary may be multiplied indefinitely ; and 

 every observant bee-keeper well knows that bees 

 gather some of their richest supplies from plants 

 bearing inconspicuous blossoms, such as the goose- 

 berry, raspberry, snowberry, mignonette, &c. Of 

 all pollen-bearing plants, the almost invisible flowers 

 of the box-tree are rifled with the greatest avidity, 

 whilst many of the most brilliantly-coloured flowers 

 either yield no honey, or secrete it in nectaries 

 which the honey-bee {Apis mellifica) cannot reach. 



My old-fashioned garden is, during a great part of 

 the year, a blaze of colour, but comparatively few 

 flowers yield my pets any sweets. It abounds in fox- 

 gloves, monk's-hoeds, delphiniums, antirrhinums, &c, 



