278 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



week was 25*5 hours, against 18 "6 hours at Glynde 

 Place, Lewes. 



For the week ending 12th November, the lowest 

 reading of the barometer was 29/06 in. on Sunday 

 morning, and the highest 30*04 in. at the end of the 

 week. The mean temperature of the air was 453 

 deg., and 1*4 deg. above the average. The general 

 direction of the wind was N.E. Rain fell on six 

 days of the week, to the aggregate amount of 0^99 of 

 an inch. The duration of registered bright sun- 

 shine in the week was 6 '4 hours, against 7*1 hours 

 at Glynde Place, Lewes. 



In December the fall of the thermometer inland, is 

 considerable, but this is considerably reduced by the 

 action of the Gulf Stream, on our Western and South- 

 western coasts. The mean temperature of December 

 is 46 at the Land's End ; 45 at Haverford West and 

 Truro ; 44 at Pembroke and Plymouth ; 43 at 

 Carmarthen, Carnarvon and Devonport ; 42 at, 

 Denbigh, Glamorgan, Taunton and Portsmouth ; 

 41 at Birkenhead, Hereford, Bristol, Winchester, and 

 Canterbury ; and40° at Blackburn, Bolton, Worcester, 

 Oxford, London and the greater part of our East 

 Coast. 



The rainfall over the greater part of England, 

 North of Reigate and East of Hereford, is 2 inches. 

 Along the South Coast, it averages 3 inches, while on 

 the West coast and South-West it reaches from 4 to 

 5 inches, the last named figure representing 516 

 tons to each acre. 



A SHADE IN STOCK COLOUR. 



By the Author of " Insect Variety/. " 



TT /"HEN nature first ruled the parallel lines of 

 V V care, music was heard and prismatic hues 

 beamed on the earth, for then to know was not to be 

 beloved. Those who have spent the season beside 

 the moire-antique, the ancient rippling sea, and have 

 noticed the proficiency of the dressmaker in con- 

 volvulus white, pale saffron, and watery blue, may 

 still have come to consider lhat shot colour is 

 conducive to certain tones of sentiment, and cer- 

 tainly when we think of a beautiful butterfly it 

 is one of rainbow hues that charms, entrances, 

 transports, and inspires us with an acute sense of 

 the delicately beautiful, that warms the heart and 

 makes us feel as though we lived in a spirit-world 

 more lovely, delightful, and fabulous. Must we 

 infer in sober sadness that this sensuous illusion was 

 merely a defect in our reason ? Surely no ! When we 

 place the butterfly's eye which we conclude can 

 interpret this diaper passion beneath the magnifying 

 glass, and instead of a glance responsive to our 

 feelings, perceive a meaningless honeycomb of 

 strange glittering facets, capable of no motion, no 

 expression of thought, no rolling in fine frenzy ; we 



begin to imagine that perhaps after all this delicious 

 sense of scenic harmony, was apportion of the beauty 

 of the landscape intended to delight ourselves. The 

 airy toy is of course miserably short sighted, for 

 experience has taught us so, but so are those blue 

 eyes so greatly praised by dilettanti, and then it was 

 so very animated. Fallacious reasoning ! If we 

 shut one of our eyes alternately and notice how 

 much more we can see with the two, it is easy to 

 understand how such goggles must render their 

 possessor more circumspect and wary than we are, 

 and then there is a conviction that the sight is also 

 more microscopic than ours. The female of the 

 purple emperor, as she sits on the topmost oak spray 

 and watches her partner turn his brown patches 

 slanting to the light, observes the long even rows of 

 scales throw their purple shadows, but since she sees 

 at a glance the radiance of love and the battledores 

 that produce it, the divine so invests itself with 

 serpent reason that it would demand the bullet head 

 of a Newton to appreciate it. Robbed of harmony 

 the rainbow hue proper to the nobler sex can only 

 retain its allure as a vulgar bait. But we have 

 still reason to show that it is an acquired character. 



Time produces change. I can picture a period in 

 the world's history when the Isle of Thanet, no 

 longer a compeer of that of Portland, was really an 

 island off the coast, and thus I infer it may have 

 come about that rosy sheets of the sea-side bindweed 

 hang upon the_ hedge-rows at Grove Ferry, on the 

 Stour, now far inland, for although I knew not how 

 to tell soldanella from sepium, I recall that a pretty 

 wreath of this celestial hue picked on the strand at 

 Luss for a summer hat, used to suggest that the 

 river Clyde once flowed into Loch Lomond. Near 

 this bindweed-hung hedge lies a reedy ditch along 

 which the flowering-rush raises its banners, and here, 

 on the 12th of August last, I was beating up game at 

 the fall of dusk. Presently up flew an example of 

 the Botys verticalis, or mother of pearl moth, differing 

 from the pale purple type so common among nettle 

 beds in being of a pale straw colour. As the 

 Entomological Society know nothing regarding its 

 claims to being a new species, it will suffice to say 

 that the fore-wings are a little less produced than 

 usual, and it is wholly of a fine straw tint instead of 

 being tinged with that colour, and the reason is that 

 the short blunt rows of scales have been replaced by 

 the long scattered yellow ones ; so, as any one can 

 guess, both the purple and its gloss are gone. It is 

 then no longer mother of pearl. Yet I cannot but 

 suppose on medical examination that its mother was 

 a pearl and its father also a pearl, and this question 

 of family becomes quite interesting when we see 

 before us not a stray sport, but the two sexes that 

 thus differ, or species that thus are reputed as such, 

 and which may be on these grounds traced to a 

 common parent. 



But butterflies in their distribution, like the race 



