HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



17 



habits, and that they will bore into oranges and 

 other fruits. As they are very widely diffused in 

 tropical regions, they must justly be ranged among 

 injurious insects. Unfortunately their early stages 

 are unknown, so that no really practical method of 

 destruction suggests itself to the mind ; but their 

 large size and striking colours, allowing them to be 

 recognized at the first glance, they may be killed 

 without any fear of reproach for committing a 

 judicial error." 



Popular Natural History Books. — Our 

 position with regard to "Geological Stories," 

 " Half- Hours in the Green Lanes," and " Half- 

 Hours at the Seaside," prevents us doing more than 

 stating, for the information of numerous inquirers 

 who applied in consequence of not being able to 

 procure them, that all have passed into new editions, 

 and may now be obtained in the ordinary way 

 through any bookseller, or from 192, Piccadilly. 



The Marine Aquarium. — We are pleased to 

 note that the nble paper by Mr. W. R. Hughes, 

 F.L.S., President of the Birmingham Natural 

 History and Microscopical Society, has been neatly 

 published (with illustrations) by Van Voorst, 

 London. The principles and management of marine 

 aquaria, large and small, are set forth with the 

 utmost clearness, and the kind of objects best suited 

 to keep up the necessary self-adjustments are 

 described. The book will be a handy manual to 

 aquarium-keepers. 



The Lepidopterist's Calendar.— Our young 

 entomological students cannot do better than pro- 

 cure this cheap and handy little work, which has 

 just reached a second edition. It is written by Mr. 

 Joseph Merrin, and published by Herbert Marsden, 

 Regent-street, Gloucester. It comprises nearly 

 300 pages, and gives the time when the British 

 lepidoptera appear in the egg, larval, pupal, and 

 imago states, together with the food-plant of each 

 species, and their habitats. The information is 

 most handily arranged under the different months 

 of the year, beginning with January. We know of 

 no other book in which so much convenient know- 

 ledge is packed so methodically away. 



Habits op Rabbit. — A coastguard-man reports 

 that, he saw a rabbit attack a weasel with such 

 courage and fierceness as to compel it to beat a re- 

 treat. Perhaps it was a mother unwontedly bold in 

 defence of her young. On reliable authority I am 

 told that a rabbit, an old doe, on being hunted by 

 two young spaniels, swam across our river Camel, at 

 Carrion Pit, a deep pool, and was soon after killed 

 on the opposite side. An intelligent country friend 

 has just sent me the head of a rabbit, with its lower 

 incisors grown to the length of an inch and a half. 

 In this case it was probably owing to some con- 

 genital want of adaptation of the upper and under 



jaw, whereby the cutting edges of the rodent teeth 

 were not brought in apposition. The upper incisors 

 were of the natural length. The animal was, in fact, 

 "underhung." Such a deformity may sometimes 

 arise from faulty development of the teeth, or acci- 

 dental dislocation. Jenyns, in his interesting 

 " Observations in Natural History," mentions occa- 

 sional instances of this monstrous prolongation of 

 the incisors. The Museum of the Cambridge Philo- 

 sophical Society has a specimen in which the lower 

 teeth are developed to the length of two inches and 

 one-eighth. The rabbits mentioned by Jenyns had, 

 when taken, the appearance of beiug starved to 

 I death : mine was shot while running with great 

 activity, and was in very fair condition. — Thomas 

 Q. Couch, Bodmin. 



Note on the Betony Weevil {Cionus scrophu- 

 larid). — During a Saturday afternoon ramble along 

 the road leading from Woodford to Chingford, a few 

 weeks since, my attention was directed to a small 

 piece of water beside the footpath, not much above 

 the dignity of a ditch, on the edge of which some 

 plants of Water Betony {Scroplmlaria aquaticd) 

 were growing. I noticed that the leaves were 

 eaten through and through, while some nettles 

 close by were more completely intact than nettles 

 commonly are. On turning up the ragged leaves 

 I found a few sluggish-looking beetles, less than 

 a quarter of an inch in length, black, with yellow 

 spots, and with lengthened beaks, which proclaimed 

 them to be of the Weevil family. Looking further, 

 I discovered a number of oval cocoons, brown and 

 membranous, and attached in most cases to the 

 under- sides of the leaves, but in other cases to the 

 upper surface, and also to the flower-stalks, on 

 which the seed-vessels were now. ripening. The 

 questioned remained, who were the depredators ? 

 Was it the beetle, or the larvae which had 'now 

 passed into the pupa state, and had made their 

 curious cocoons, or some other devourers which 

 had decamped? Closer inspection showed that 

 some of the cocoons were empty, the integument 

 having cracked all round near the upper end, 

 except at one point, so as to form a natural lid to 

 the tiny box ; others still contained a dark body 

 dimly visible through the membrane. The shape of 

 the cocoon resembled that of dipterous insects, 

 and some of the ichneumonidee, but quite unlike 

 the closely-fitting envelope of the Cbleoptera. 

 However, fiat experimenttim appeared to be the 

 best motto, and a number of the cocoons were 

 speedily boxed, together with two or three of the 

 weevils, for further examination. On reaching 

 home I soon made out the latter to be the Cionus 

 scroplmlaria of entomologists; and in a few days 

 several specimens of the same insect emerged from 

 the cocoons. On referring (among other works) to 

 the English Cyclopaedia, I found that the four [five] 



