726 NArURAL SCIENCE. p^c.. 



eitlier by conveying them long distances in their crops or digestive- 

 canals, or less frequently in the mud sticking to their feet or 

 plumage. 



In conclusion, the author mentions some interesting experiments 

 on a few plants. The frog-bit [Hydyocharis morsns-yanac) is largely 

 propagated in this climate by buds, many of which float through the 

 winter till spring, when they develop into the characteristic plant. 

 Plants were raised not only from these, but from buds that had been 

 enclosed some weeks in ice, or had sunk after floating a week or 

 more in sea-water. The seeds sink both in fresh and sea-water, but 

 would readily adhere to the plumage of a water bird by means of the 

 gelatinous pulp in which they are surrounded when discharged from 

 the fruit ; they could thus be easily transported. The detached 

 leaflets of Cardamine hirstita are found floating in numbers in the drift 

 of the Thames and Lea, and the ponds of Epping Forest from autumn 

 to spring. From some which had been kept afloat all the winter 

 plants were reared, and also from leaflets that had been several weeks 

 in ice ; but a week of sea-water destroys the reproductive power- 

 Finally, as regards the duckweeds. Fronds of Lemna minor collected 

 in the Lea in October remained afloat through the winter, and are now 

 thriving ; in fact the fronds were found during every month of the year, 

 sometimes in quantity enclosed in ice. The seeds will germinate after 

 floating a day or two in sea-water, but a week's immersion kills them.. 

 Sea-water kills most of the fronds, e\en after a day's floating ; somev 

 however, recover and in rare instances survive a week in the sea. In 

 rainy weather they can withstand an exposure of one or two days, and 

 might thus be carried some distance on a bird's plumage. Lemna 

 gibba apparently disappears in the winter, and L. polyrhiza is repre- 

 sented only by small rootless fronds. L. tyisulca seems to live througb 

 the winter in the Thames and Lea ; and it was found enclosed in 

 quantity in the ice of an Epping Forest pond after weeks of frost.. 

 The fronds of the three last species behave like those of L. minor in, 

 sea-water. 



An An'cient L.\ke-Village in Somersetshire. 



We have already had occasion to refer to the scarcity of remains- 

 of Lake-dwellings in England {supra, pp. 40-43), and it is gratifying 

 to be able to record a newly-discovered example in Somersetshire. 

 In the Times of October 24, Dr. R. Munro calls attention to this 

 discovery, which was made by Mr. Arthur BuUeid, of Glastonbury, 

 and his observations are of so much interest as to be worthy of 

 special quotation. The site is about a mile north of Glastonbury, on 

 the road to the village of Godney ; and, before excavation, _the 

 remains consisted of a number of low mounds, rising from one to two 

 feet above the surrounding soil, and extending from 20 to 30 feet, 

 across. 



