216 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



tradition in the East that one of the tests by which the 

 queen of Sheba tried to prove the wisdom of Solomon, was 

 placing on a table before him two bouquets, one of artificial, 

 and the other of natural, flowers, and requiring that he 

 should say which were the real and which the artificial, 

 without moving from his throne. Solomon ordered the 

 windows to be thrown open, and in flew the bees, &c., 

 which went at once to the real flowers. Whether the senses 

 of insects, birds, and what we call the lower creation, are 

 similar to ours in every respect, it is very difficult to say. 

 No doubt a dog, if he could speak, would say a man had not 

 the sense of smell, and would prove that his nose was worse 

 than useless to him. An eagle or hawk would say that men 

 and moles, &c., have only the rudiments of eyes; and so on. 

 Man, with five very imperfectly developed senses (who can 

 say that there are not twenty senses), is the only animal that 

 is dogmatical, and denies all he cannot understand. The 

 oracle of Delphi said ' Socrates was the wisest man in 

 Greece, because he was the only man who knew he knew 

 nothing.' — Yours faithfully, C. L. W. Meklin. 

 "To Henry Cecil, Esq., Bournemouth." 



Preservation of Epping Forest. — The Epping Forest 

 bill received the royal assent on the 8lh August last; and 

 from that day, after a twenty-five years' struggle, a tract of 

 close upon six thousand acres of virgin forest will be preserved 

 for public use. By its provisions what remains of the Forest 

 will be vested in the Corporation of London, for ever, for the 

 use of the commoners and the recreation of the public : thus 

 one of the "happy hunting-grounds" of the metropolitan 

 entoa)ologist is still likely to retain many of its treasures. 

 Its rich insect fauna is constantly referred to throughout our 

 own ten volumes. London naturalists certainly must be con- 

 gratulated on their city standing alone amongst the European 

 capitals as possessing a virgin forest actually touching its 

 borders (at Stratford). The whole county of Essex was 

 originally one vast forest. Kings Stephen and John were the 

 first to commence its disaffbrestment, which has gradually 

 been going on to the present day. it is to be ho))ed that this 

 is now effectually stopped ; and that Loughton or Waltham 

 will long continue a favourite resort, not only for the mere 

 holiday-maker and lover of Nature, but for the scientific 

 naturalist. — E. A. F. 



