506 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



peared to hold a consultation. The chirp- 

 ing, twittering, murmuring, and occasional 

 ejaculations, were all unmistakable. In a 

 few moments tliese all ceased, and the work 

 commenced. Each took hold of the mus- 

 lin strip, at about the same distance in each 

 case from the ends, and, taking flight simul- 

 taneously, bore it away. Soon there was 

 much jabbering at the nest : the birds 

 could not agree how to use the strip, and 

 it was finally abandoned ; but so, too, was 

 the nest, and the birds left the neighbor- 

 hood. 



Parasite ia a Child's Monthi At a meet- 

 ing of scientific men lately held in New Bruns- 

 wick, New Jersey, Prof. Lockwood exhib- 

 ited a thread-worm which, he said, was sent 

 him by a student of Rutgers College, two 

 years ago, who found it in an apple which 

 he was eating. It looked so like an animal 

 parasite that the professor was puzzled to 

 fix its character. He stated that Prof 

 Leidy had recently described before the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences, at Philadel- 

 phia, the same worm, also taken from an 

 apple ; who also said tliat this worm was 

 a parasite of the larva of the codling moth, 

 whose grub, or larva, as is well known, in- 

 fests the young apple, feeding inside of it, 

 and thus causing it to fall from the tree to 

 the ground, when the larva leaves the fruit 

 and enters the ground, in which to pass its 

 pupa state. Thus the worm, whose name 

 is Mermis acuminata, was really an animal 

 parasite, sustaining its own life apparently 

 by a vegetable diet, after the death of the 

 larva codh'ng, either by absorption, or its 

 own consumption of it. Dr. Leidy called 

 the attention of the Academy to the fact 

 that twenty-five years ago he described be- 

 fore them the same entozoon taken from the 

 mouth of a child. At that time he was 

 ignorant of the origin of the parasite. It 

 now seems fair to infer that the child had 

 been eating an infested apple, and that the 

 worm had a second time changed its nidus 

 for that of the child's mouth. 



Summer Temperature of Scotland. Mr, 



McNab, Director of the Edinburgh Botanic 

 Garden, last year published some facts go- 

 ing to show that the mean summer tem- 

 perature of Scotland has been growing 



colder during the last two or three genera- 

 tions. According to Mr. McNab, sundry 

 plants which thrived in Scotland fifty or 

 seventy-five years ago can now scarcely 

 be grown there. Mr. William Tillery com- 

 municates to the Gardener''s Chronicle sev- 

 eral other facts confirmatory of McNab's 

 conclusions. Forty years ago, nearly all 

 the gardens of note in South Ayrshire used 

 to exhibit at the horticultural shows peaches 

 and nectarines grown on walls in the open 

 air. Some good white and black figs were 

 likewise ripened on the open walls in favor- 

 able summers ; but this is of very rare oc- 

 currence now. At the present time, garden- 

 ers in the most favored districts of Scotland 

 and in Northern and Midland England are 

 lamenting the unproductive state of their 

 peach and nectarine trees in the open air. 

 A weather-register, kept for the last thirty- 

 eight years, shows that of late years the 

 winters have been more open, the frosts in 

 the spring months later and more severe, 

 and the rainfall more irregular, than for- 

 merly. 



International Weather Reports. It has 



been proposed to establish an exchange of 

 telegraphic weather reports between the 

 Signal-Office at Washington and the meteo- 

 rological bureaus of the various countries 

 of Europe, and it is claimed that such ex- 

 change would be likely to afford valuable data 

 for forecasting the weather on both sides of 

 the Atlantic. Mr. W. Clement Ley, who has 

 worked for a considerable time at the com- 

 parison of United States with European 

 weather-charts, holds that such exchange 

 would be undesirable for Europe, on the fol- 

 lowing grounds : 1. Only a small proportion 

 of the storms experienced on the American 

 side of the Atlantic can subsequently be 

 distinctly traced in Europe at all. 2. Of 

 those thus traceable, the majority are felt 

 severely only in the extreme north of Eu- 

 rope, and are not productive of serious re- 

 sults on the coasts of Britain, France, or 

 Denmark. 3. The velocity of their progress 

 varies indefinitely, and could not be deduced 

 from the velocity of the currents experi- 

 enced in them, even if the latter were not 

 variable also. 4. Many of the most de- 

 structive European storms occur when press- 

 ures over the Eastern United States coast 



