HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



197 



pence or threepence each, since which time its price 

 in the entomological market has been much increased. 

 Turca, Nebulosa, Blanda, Caliginosa, Pyramidea, 

 and others of the " ignobile vulgus," were frequent 

 visitors. One night we were thrown into a state of 

 excitement ; we were " sugaring " in Holland's 

 Wood, and had just completed our operations when 

 loud bellowings were heard, and one of the men from 

 the village, who was sugaring in the same place, ran 

 up in haste with the intelligence that we must look 

 out for our safety, as we had intruded on the privacy 

 of a bull and his cows, and that as soon as the bull had 



Fig. in.— Lithosia quadra. Male. 



Fig. 112. — Selidosema plumaria. Male. 



Fig. iit,. — Sfl'idosema plumaria. Female. 



Fig. 114. — Dicycla Oo. 



worked himself into the requisite amount of rage he 

 would be sure to resent it ; adding the pleasing infor- 

 mation that only a week or two previously a police- 

 man had been nearly killed by one, and that he and 

 his father were " tree'd " for more than an hour. 

 A council of war is accordingly held, and it is deter- 

 mined that the best thing to be done is to "take 

 the bull by the horns," and en masse charge the 

 rascal before he has time for an onslaught. Away 

 therefore we go, with shouts so loud and shrill as to 

 make the woods and nodding groves rebellow to the 

 road, and we soon had the satisfaction of driving pigs, 



cows, bull, and all the " feroe naturae," far into the 

 Forest. Judge though of our horror and disgust when 

 after all the bravery and heroism displayed, the bull 

 turns out next morning to be a harmless steer ! 

 Possibly our kind informant had a desire to clear the 

 woods of other animals than bulls ! 



I must not omit to mention that the somewhat rare 

 little Nolo, strigula came to sugar freely. 



And here I may just allude — one being in my 

 possession — to the three Cicadas recently taken in the 

 Forest, one by my friend Mr. Auld, who distinctly 

 heard it stridulate ; the other two by Mr. James 

 Gulliver. All three of them are females, and in each 

 instance their capture was effected from the loud 

 noise they were making. This is conclusive evider.C2 

 as to the power of stridulation on the part of the 

 females of Cicada Montana, 



"Et cantu querula? rumpent arbusta cicada." 



Chichester. Joseph Anderson, Jun. 



OUR COMMON BRITISH FOSSILS, AND 

 WHERE TO FIND THEM. 



By J. E. Taylor, Ph.D., F.G.S., &c. 



No. XII. 



SPEAKING of British fossil corals— perhaps it 

 would be impossible to direct the student to 

 richer fossiliferous deposits than the lower carboni- 

 ferous strata of Scotland. Mr. James Thomson, 

 F.G.S., who has worked these deposits for corals 



Fig. us. — Fossil Coral 

 ( Dibunophyllum). 



Fig. 116. — Zaphrentis. 



more assiduously than any other 



geologist, is of opinion that their 



abundance in Scotland is due to 



the strata of the latter having 



been deposited in shallow water, 



whilst the English carboniferous Fig 117. — Trans- 



... verse section of 

 or mountain limestone was laid Zaphrentis. 



down in deep water. But the 

 great thickness of the limestone in Derbyshire (about 

 five thousand feet) indicates a depression of the sea- 

 floor all the time the beds were forming ; for it 

 would have had its mineral characters altered if 



