HARD WICKE 'S SCIENCE - GOSSIP. 



57 



truth of this is readily proved, for flowers which are 

 "set" artificially freely produce seed, while those 

 left to themselves, being grown under glass, and thus 

 out of the reach of most insects, never come to matu- 

 rity. The seed-vessel is somewhat curious, as well as 

 other parts of the plant, being in shape a flattened 

 sphere with a long beak, and contains two to four 

 hemispherical rough blackish seeds. Altogether, 

 whether as botanical curiosity, or a garden ornament, 

 this Thunbergia is well worth growing. 



Greenwood Pim, M.A., F.L.S. 



THE POTATO-BEETLE. 



IN thanking Mr. W. V. Andrews, the Correspond- 

 ing Secretary of the Long Island Entomologists' 

 Society, U.S.A., for his kind and complimentary 

 allusions to myself on page I of the present volume, 

 I am reluctantly compelled, as he classes me " in the 

 ranks of the alarmists," to conclude either (i) that I 

 have, in my article on the Beetle in question, in 

 Science-Gossip of 1st September last, acted un- 

 wittingly upon the principle that language is given us 

 to conceal our thoughts ; or, (2) that Mr. Andrews 

 does not thoroughly understand the English tongue. 

 There is some slight excuse for the first hypothesis in 

 my remarks upon South Kensington on p. 202 ; and 

 it is humiliating to have to point out, even to an out- 

 sider, that these were "written sarkastic," as the 

 great Artemus says. For the second one, I must 

 refer to my express statement, on p. 203, that " to 

 the writer it seems that our much damper and colder 

 climate, not affording opportunities for the rapid suc- 

 cession of broods which the insect develops in 

 America, must materially militate against its obtaining 

 a permanent hold ; and the collateral arguments, that 

 no American beetle has ever established itself in Eng- 

 land, and that we possess no near ally of this parti- 

 cular one, cannot fail to have some weight in the 

 matter." The fact is, that to every Coleopterist of 

 my acquaintance, and to every one (the name is 

 legion) with whom I have had conversation on the 

 s ubject, it is well known that I have from the first 

 steadily and strenuously been opposed to any belief 

 in the idea that the potato-beetle could be of any 

 harm in this country ; and this view I have always 

 upheld in everything I have written. Indeed, I have 

 a firm conviction that, if circumstances had not pre- 

 vented the present Editor of Science-Gossip (long 

 may he reign !) from attending the Plymouth meeting 

 of the British Association, where there was much 

 talk, post-prandial and otherwise, upon this subject, 

 the false conclusion as to my being among the alarmists 

 would never have appeared — at all events, without 

 simultaneous correction. 



Mr. Andrews says : — •" Mr. Rye tells you that Paris 

 green is a favourite remedy here, but he does not 

 understand the American mode of doing things. 



Some State entomologist or other probably had a 

 friend in the oil or colour business," &c, and, " You 

 do not do things in that way in honest old England, 

 but we do here." Without going so far as to quote a 

 homely Saxon proverb, concerning a certain ill bird 

 and its nest, I must, remembering Riley, Le Baron, 

 Packard, Cyrus Thomas, and other "good men and 

 true," of whose scientific help the U.S. Government 

 has wisely availed itself, energetically disclaim the 

 acceptance of such remarks as these as a sample of the 

 " Science-Gossip " of the States. It is to the first- 

 named of these authorities that we owe most of our 

 knowledge of Transatlantic economic entomology ; 

 and his reputation is far too securely established to be 

 shaken by the insinuations of even the Corresponding 

 Secretary of the Long Island Entomologists' Society. 

 That gentleman's concluding caution to English 

 readers, that all striped beetles found on potatoes are 

 not Colorado beetles, but may be useful little fellows, 

 &c, shows an ignorance of our Insect Fauna, re- 

 markable in one who proposes to allay our (hypo- 

 thetical) fears. E. C. Rye. 



NOTES FROM WEST KERRY. 



ONLY a few species of Cetacea are known to 

 frequent the Irish coast ; the common por- 

 poise is of every-day occurrence ; the pilot-whale 

 {Globioceplialus Svineval) is often met with in large 

 numbers, and an immense B alalia is occasionally 

 cast on shore. All the smaller species of Cetacea are 

 termed " Porpoises " by the Irish peasantry, who 

 value them, not only as excellent food, but attribute 

 to their flesh and oil hygienic and medicinal proper- 

 ties. Consequently, whenever one or more happen 

 to be stranded, they rush in crowds with scythes and 

 sickles, hatchets, pitchforks, spades, knives, and all 

 manner of deadly weapons, to the scene of the occur- 

 rence, hew, hack, decapitate, and cut into fragments 

 the unwieldy stranger, and long before rumour of the 

 capture has reached any educated person, the coveted 

 flesh is stored away in tubs, or piled in a corner of 

 some sooty cabin ; the entrails and useless viscera 

 thrown into the receding tide or torn by hogs (the 

 dear and cherished associates in Irish cabins of scro- 

 fulous children and of their filthy parents), and so 

 far as science is concerned the unfortunate fish, seal, 

 or cetacean, might as well have remained in his 

 marine abode. On a March morning in 1S64, on 

 the shelving sandy beach of Fermoyle, skirting the 

 waters of Brandon Bay, on the west coast of Kerry, 

 I observed two men moving a heavy object, which 

 on closer inspection proved to be part of the head of 

 a cetacean such as I had never before seen. The 

 head had been much larger, and divided vertically 

 behind the eyes ; the front portion only remained ; 

 the eyes, however, were left untouched, as also the 

 lunated spiracle, with the concavity looking forward. 



