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HARD WICKE' S S CIENCE - G O SSI P. 



GEOLOGY, &C. 



A Landslip in Dorsetshire. — I happened to 

 be spending a few clays in the picturesque village of 

 Burton Bradstock, Dorsetshire, when about 2 A.M. 

 on Friday, March nth, we were startled by such a 

 landslip and fall of the cliffs— here more than 100 

 feet high — as had not occurred within the memory of 

 that remarkable personage, the oldest inhabitant. 

 The strata, inferior oolite, consisting of sand inter- 

 calated with thin bands of shelly ragstone, resting 

 conformably upon the upper lias, having in all 

 probability been affected by the rains and frosts of 

 an unusually changeable winter, had slipped away 

 from its intractable base — burying upwards of an acre 

 of the adjacent beach beneath thousands of tons of 

 debris. For a few hours before the sea began to play 

 havoc with the ruins, interesting fossils were to be 

 had in abundance. Many of these were of course 

 shattered beyond all hope of reconstruction ; but 

 countless numbers of them were to be found in more 

 or less perfect states. Among the fossils thus un- 

 expectedly exposed were various genera of the 

 Brachiopodre, Cephalopodae, Conchiferce, Echino- 

 dermatse, Gasteropodje, etc., with numerous well- 

 preserved fragments of Monocotyledonous wood. — 

 C. JV. Barham, F.S.Sc. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Sea-birds Inland. — A young puffin was caught 

 in an exhausted state at Ardsley, near Leeds, on 

 September 17th. A stormy petrel was shot on an 

 artificial lake near Wakefield in October. — Geo. 

 Roberts, Lofthouse, Wake/teld, 



Grey Wagtails. — In the first vol. of Science- 

 Gossip another of your correspondents narrates a 

 similar occurrence of this bird tapping at a window. 

 It seems to be a peculiarity of this species. 



The Mango. — With exception of this, the 

 plantain and two or three others, almost all the 

 really good fruit trees of India are aliens. The 

 custard apple and the pine, the orange, shaddock and 

 lemon, the red banana, pomegranate and guava, all 

 are introductions for which we may thank, in great 

 part, our predecessors, the Portuguese ; to them, at 

 any rate, are we indebted for having, by scientific 

 arboriculture, brought the mango to the high degree 

 of excellence it has attained in Western India. 

 Relays of runners posted between Delhi and Bombay 

 were means by which the Emperor Aurungzebe's table 

 was duly supplied with royal " Alphonsos " in the 

 seasoD ; but to taste them in perfection, gathered ripe 

 from the tree, would necessitate a journey to Bombay 

 or to Goa for the purpose, as it is only on the 

 Mahratta seaboard that the fruit attains its superlative 

 superiority overall others produced elsewhere. Some 

 peculiarity in the soil, combined with essential climatic 

 conditions, no doubt is a sine qu& non ; and that 

 must be referred to the black sandy subsoil of decom- 

 posed greenstone — a kind of basalt — which charac- 

 terises the geological formation of that part of India ; 



iron is one of its constituents to which the overlying 

 laterite, a sedimentary deposit, owes its colour and 

 name. The true form of the fruit is oval, obscurely 

 half reniform, at the end nearest the stalk, and this is 

 caused by the presence of a small projection or 

 apiculus, remains of the deciduous style. The ovary 

 is set somewhat obliquely in an annular five-lobed. 

 disc, with a lateral style, and the single fertile stamen 

 directly opposite ; both style and stamen incurved 

 towards one another : the rudimentary stamens 

 between them, two on each side. Of the freely 

 branched panicle most of the flowers are barren ; five 

 perfect stamens and a rudimentary pistil. The in- 

 florescence therefore can hardly be called polygamous ; 

 but monoecious rather by abortion ; the flowers are 

 small, anthers purple, and petals streaked with 

 orange. A like structure occurs in the cashew nut, 

 another plant of the order with ten stamens, one only 

 perfect. They arise however, from the inner, not as 

 in the mango from the outer border of the disk. Is it 

 therefore disk, properly so understood in the cashew 

 nut, or torus only ? This it is which grows, as the nut, 

 so called ripens, into the spongy pyriform mass, 

 having the odd appearance of a fruit with its seed 

 outside instead of within it. The mango has a one- 

 celled ovary with a single ovule suspended from a 

 cord arising from the base of the cell, as in other 

 genera of the order. What is the placentation in this 

 instance ? axile or central ? If one might venture an 

 opinion, the funiculus having a sigmoidal lateral 

 inflection might be, without any very extraordinary- 

 stretch of imagination, regarded as simply a discon- 

 nected parietal placenta plant of the plumbaginaceous 

 order. Statice Armeria, &c, have also ovules sus- 

 pended by a cord, but though one-celled and one- 

 seeded like anacards, they must be considered as 

 being only abortively so, for the flowers are pentagy- 

 nous. Sporidias however, among Indian anacards, 

 has five pistils, and a perfect five-celled, five-seeded 

 drupe. — Edy. 



Son ability OF MiCB.— I have often observed 

 when taking down stacks of oats, the nest of the 

 common mouse (Mits domestica), and although an 

 enemy to mankind, they must surely live in the best of 

 friendship. It is by no means uncommon to find two 

 families of young of different ages in the same nest, 

 but I was rather surprised a short time ago to find 

 three distinct litters of young in one nest ! They 

 were all in a heap, without any division or separation. 

 One family of six were two or three days old ; another 

 litter of seven were aged eight or ten days, while 

 another lot of six were about able to shift for them- 

 selves. Whether their unity be for the greater 

 warmth, or to avoid labour, or for the better protec- 

 tion of their young, who can tell, or how each mother 

 can suckle her own in such a promiscuous lot? — 

 W. Sim, Fyvic. 



Curious sudden disappearance of a Spring. 

 — Another curious thing happened at Fairburn last 

 November. Above the curling pond, but the other 

 side of the river— and facing north— is a plantation 

 of Scotch firs, I should fancy some thirty or forty 

 years old. In this plantation is, or rather was, a copious 

 spring of capital water, which was run into the 

 house by pressure some six or seven years ago to 

 supply it with best water, and was found quite 

 adequate. Last summer was cold, dry, and windy, 

 but September and November were the wettest 

 months of the year (except January) and yet after all 

 this rain the spring disappeared in November. The 

 gardener suggests that the trees tapped it. But had 

 that been the case, I should have thought the water 



