February 17, 1898] 



NATURE 



365 



white, pleasing tints of a flat brown, of the pheasant-egg cast, 

 are obtained. This colour has met with approval among artist 

 friends to whom it was shown. 



The beauty of colour and fastness to light of this pigment, 

 from such an unpromising material, may be of interest to artists' 

 colourmen. David Paterson. 



Leabank, Rosslyn, Midlothian. 



Early Spring Flowers. 



Your readers will doubtless have been observing how the 

 mildness of the weather this winter, so far, has hastened on the 

 spring flowers. I am inclined to think that some of the dates 

 mentioned below have not often been paralleled. The dates in 

 brackets, of the usual flowering times, have been taken from 

 Babington's " Manual of Botany" and Johnson's " Gardeners' 

 Dictionary." December lo, 1897, Helleborus fcetidus{Y€ax\X2,xy) ; 

 December 23, 1897, Eranthis hyemalis (February, March) ; 

 December 31, 1897, Iris histrio (December to March) ; 

 January 14, 1898, Mercurialis perennis, <J (April and May) ; 

 January 14, Cory his avellana, f, ; January 29, 9 (March, April) ; 

 January 15, Galanthus nivalis (February) ; January 19, Ane- 

 mone Aepaiica ('Sia.Tch, April); January 20, Anemone fulgens 

 (February 20, 1897), (March, April! ; January 20, Ranunculus 

 Ficaria (February 20, 1897), (April, May) ; January 20, Viola 

 odorata, wild (March, April); January 21, Iris histrioides 

 (March); January 21, Tussilago Farfara (February 20, 1897), 

 (March, April) ; January 21, Berberis Aquifolium (April); 

 January 22, Potentilla Fraoariastrum (April, May) ; January 

 24, Primula vulgaris, wild (March to May); January 24, 

 Crocus aureus (February) ; January 26, Omphalodes verna 

 (March); January 29, Aucuba japonica, S (June). On the 9 

 plant there is no sign of flower yet, and the berries have just 

 turned red. January 29, £///;«« i-«r,:«/^5a (February 21, 1897), 

 (March to May) ; January 29, Daphne Laureola (February, 

 March); January 29, Arabis albida (February 21, 1897), 

 (February). Among other plants which began to flower in 

 November, and have gone on until now with unusual luxuriance, 

 we have noted Garrya elliptica, <J (just over), Viburnum Tinus, 

 Petasites fragrans, Lonicero fragrantissima, lonopsidium 

 acaule. Erica carnea, garden violets, and primroses, single and 

 double, and forget-me-not, I may add that on December i, 

 1897, in the course of an hour, in and around the garden here, 

 I noted upwards of 120 different kinds of plants in flower. A 

 few were winter flowers, but most of them were belated summer 

 and autumn ones. 



Aphides are feeding on young rose and iris leaves, and slugs 

 are playing havoc with young shoots of herbaceous and alpine 

 plants. 



A young rabbit was seen ten days ago in Devonshire, and in 

 Gloucestershire a nest containing eggs of the blackbird and one 

 of the robin with eggs were found about the same time. 



Dadnor, Herefordshire, January 31. E. Armitage. 



Insusceptibility of Insects to Poisons. 



In your review of " Notes of a Naturalist and Antiquary" in 

 the issue of November 18, it is said that the caterpillar of the 

 Spurge Hawk Moth "feeds exclusively on the Sea Spurge, 

 although the plant secretes an acrid juice ' so painfully 

 poisonous that it is difficult to imagine a digestive apparatus 

 competent to deal with it.' " 



This recalls to me a case, which came under my notice some 

 years ago, in which a druggist had prepared a quantity of 

 poisoned wheat for killing sparrows, then lately introduced here 

 and a great nuisance, by soaking it in a solution of strychnine 

 coloured with magenta. He found that on keeping it for some 

 time in cardboard boxes it became infested with weevils ; so 

 I examined it to find if it really contained the alkaloid. The 

 boxes were full of weevils and their excrement, and the wheat 

 was more than half of it eaten. Strychnine was present in 

 the wheat in the weevils, and in apparently larger proportion in 

 the excrement, so that it had evidently passed through the 

 digestive apparatus unchanged. Will. A. Di.xoN. 



Sydney, December 31, 1897. 



Mr. Dixon's letter supplies a further illustration of the 

 curious fact that certain insect larvae are able to feed upon 

 poisonous plants with impunity, and can pass through their 

 digestive system an amount of poison sufficient to kill many a 



NO. 1477. VOL. 57] 



more highly organised being. It is perhaps owing to their 

 being less highly organised that they are not susceptible to the 



Eoison. Although various instances in support of the fact have 

 een placed on record, I have not met with any attempted 

 explanation. 



M. Felix Plateau, in a paper on the phenomena of 

 digestion in insects, published in the Alemoires de V Academie 

 Royale de Belgiqtie (tome xii.), an abstract of which may be 

 found in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History (ser. 4, 

 vol. x\a.), has remarked that some substances resist the digestive 

 action and are passed with the excrement — as in the case of the 

 weevils examined by Mr. Dixon. Such, he says, are the 

 chitine of the integuments of insects, vegetable cellulose, and 

 chlorophyll, which by the aid of the micro-spectroscope may be 

 detected at all parts of the alimentary tube of herbivorous 

 insects ; but he says nothing of the effects of poison. 



Dr. T. R. Fraser has shown {Attn, and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 

 3, vol. xiii.), that the caterpillar oi Deiopeia puichella feeds on the 

 virulent poison contained in the kernel of the seed of Physostigma 

 venenosum, and is unaffected by the poisonous principle of the 

 kernel — "eserinia." Yet he ascertained by experiment that 

 the caterpillars subjected in various ways to the action of 

 hydrocyanic acid quickly died, proving that this species 

 possesses no universal panacea against all poisons. 



Curious to relate, another insect, a weevil Anthonomus 

 druparum, feeds with impunity on the very poison which is 

 fatal to the last-mentioned insect, namely on the kernel of 

 Prunus cerasus, the poisonous properties of which depend 

 on the hydrocyanic acid it contains. It appears, therefore, that 

 what is one insect's food is another insect's poison, and vice 

 versa. The subject offers a fine field for investigation, and the 

 results of further experiments, if made known, would be of 

 interest to many besides professed entomologists. 



The Reviewer. 



Variation of Water-Level under Wind-Pressure. 



In confirmation of Mr. Wheeler's observations as to the 

 variation of water-level under wind-pressure, two interesting 

 beaches in the Great West Bay may be cited. 



At the Chesil Bank (where all forces combine to raise the 

 water-level) a height of 42 feet 9 inches above normal spring tide, 

 high-water, is the height of the shingle-barrier raised by winds, 

 waves, and currents to bar their own progress. Within the same 

 bay, in the minor inlet of Torbay, the beach at Goodrington 

 Sands (exposed to an easterly drift of more than 200 miles, and 

 to waves exceeding 300 feet from crest to crest) rises 5 feet 

 above the mark of fine weather spring tides ; and this low bank 

 is, or was when I saw it in 1889, the sole barrier between a 

 grass field and the English Channel. The explanation clearly 

 is that the harder it blows from the east, the more the level of the 

 English Channel is lowered and the waters of Torbay with it. 



Torquay, February 4. -'^. R- HUNT. 



Bipedal Lizards. 



My correspondent, Mr. H. Prestoe, has taken the trouble to 

 examine the collections at the Natural History Museum, and 

 by so doing has identified the bipedally-running Diamond Lizard 

 of Trinidad, referred to in my last week's communication, with 

 the Ameiva surinamensis of Gray. This identification is of 

 additional interest, since it associates the faculty and habit of 

 bipedal locomotion with yet a third family group of the lizard 

 tribe, namely, that of the Teiidae. 



A good illustration of the species under notice, in a state of 

 repose, is given in vol. v. of Lydekker's " Royal Natural 

 History." ^Y. Saville-Kent. 



THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN. 



THE first Indian mail dispatched after the total 

 eclipse of January 22 has now arrived, and it 

 brings a number of details of the work done and results 

 obtained during the two minutes of totality. It is 

 therefore now possible to supplement the information 

 derived from cablegrams already published in NATURE 

 (January 27, p. 294) with extracts from the reports of 

 the various eclipse parties. The Government of India 

 appears to have rendered assistance to all the observers, 

 and it has earned the gratitude of men of science 



