HARD IV I CKE ' S S CIE NCE - G SSIP. 



217 



NATURAL HISTORY NOTES IN GERMANY. 



By R. B. P. 



S I always read with 

 great pleasure the 

 experiences of 

 naturalists in the 

 field, which from 

 time to time ap- 

 pear in Science- 

 Gossip, I think — 

 for I can hardly 

 be singular in this 

 respect — that a 

 few notes on na- 

 tural history, 

 which I made 

 when in Germany 

 last summer, may 

 be of interest to 

 some of your 

 readers. 



Starting one 

 morningabout the 

 middle of June, from my quarters at Heidelberg, I 

 crossed the new bridge over the Neckar, and taking 

 the path along the right bank, I made my way 

 leisurely down the river as far as Wieblingen, a village 

 lying on the opposite bank. 



Within two or three hundred yards of the bridge I 

 observed fine groups of Lysimachia vulgaris and 

 Ly 'thrum salicaria, both in full flower. They were 

 growing in a pool formed by the percolation of the 

 water from the river through the stone bank built 

 here for the purpose of narrowing the stream, and so 

 giving a greater depth of water for the barges, which 

 are constantly passing up and down. It was the 

 typical form of L. vulgaris, a beautiful plant as all 

 English botanists know ; but the variety punctata, 

 which I believe is peculiar to Germany, and which 

 I met with higher up the river a few days afterwards, 

 is, I think, even handsomer. 



I also noticed, hereabouts, plants, apparently 

 wild, of Asparagus officinalis and Fceniculum vulgare, 

 also two species of verbascum, the stately thapsus, 

 No. 274.— October 1887. 



and the white form of blattaria j on a plant of the 

 first I saw several full-grown larvce of the common 

 mullein moth. 



About half a mile below the bridge the white-thorn 

 bushes were almost denuded of their foliage by the 

 larvre of (I think) the gold tail moth, which almost 

 covered these bushes, but as I saw a family of the 

 red-backed shrike (Lanius collurio) feasting in their 

 turn on the caterpillars, I think — for I often passed 

 that way, and always saw the shrikes about — that 

 they in time destroyed the greater part of those 

 destructive insects. 



After a time the path runs between narrow strips 

 of meadow-land, and here I found Ornithogalum 

 vulgatum, growing in profusion ; here, too, I saw 

 fresh specimens of the blue butterflies, P. Icarus 

 and P. Scmiargus, with an occasional P. minima, 

 and a grizzled skipper that I took for C. Pahzmon. 



Later on in the month I had a fine catch of 

 black-veined and marbled whites [A. cratccgi and 

 M. galathea) in these little meadows, and, later 

 still, I found the eggs of the former in great 

 abundance on both the black and white thorns 

 close by. 



Still further on, I came to the spot where, a few 

 days before, I had secured four or five fine fresh 

 specimens of C. hyale, and the hurried inquisitive 

 flight of a whitish butterfly, which I here caught 

 sight of, though at some distance, shewed me at once 

 that I had not yet cleared off the whole brood on my 

 former visit. 



Whilst watching Hyale, I was surprised, on looking 

 up, to see no less than five kites {Milvus regalis), 

 sailing round and round above the river, with their 

 long forked tails now extended and now closed One 

 of them stooped to the water, and seemed to grasp 

 with its claws at something on, or just beneath, the 

 surface, but I could not see that anything was lifted. 

 I saw the same manoeuvre repeated on another occa- 

 sion — for I used to see this evidently family-party 

 two or three times a week — but I could never make 

 out what the bird's object was, in making these 



L 



