554 



NATURE 



{Oct. 9, 1879 



the angry bees ; cautiously emerging from their sheets on the high 

 road, the first person they encountered was their Colonel and his 

 family driving to Church. The finale may be imagined ! 



I have always been fond of sleeping out during the hot weather, 

 sub Jove frigido, or rather torriJo, and used to have a sooraee 

 (a porous earthen water bottle) capped by a tumbler, on _the 

 ground by my side. 



One night I awoke to drink and, half awake, lifting the 

 sooraee on to my naked knee proceeded to fill the tumbler. In 

 a moment I felt as if a red hot poker had been freely applied to 

 my knee, and, thinking that I had been stung by a snake, 

 rushed into the house for a light, and a dose of sal volatile. I was 

 now wide awake, and returned with the light to examine into 

 matters, and then I found a large centipede coiled round the 

 bottom of the sooraee, whither it had come for coolness or a 

 drink, or both. It was six inches long. Judging from the size 

 of the burn (for I bore the large red mark for many days), I 

 inferred that I had not been bitten, but that the whole animal 

 was acrid. 



Peshawar H. F. Hutchinson 



Spider's Web, New Caledonia 



Consul Layard's account of the spiders' webs of the Poly- 

 nesian Arachnids (Nature, vol. xx. p. 456) reminds one of the 

 colonial enthusiasm of certain fair ladies in Mauritius seventy 

 years ago, previous to the capture of that island by General 

 Abercrombie. 



Throughout the Mascarene group are numerous species of 

 Araneidea, among which Epeira inaiirata and E. mauricia are 

 pre-eminent, their bright yellow webs being conspicuously 

 stretched between the pointed leaves of the agaves and prickly- 

 pears. Taking advantage of these " grandes toiles verticales a 

 fils jaunes, soyeux et susceptibles d'etre travailles; sous le 

 gouverneur-general Decaen, les dames Creoles de I'ile de France 

 tisserent avec les fils de ces belles araneides une paire de gants 

 dont elles firent hommage a I'imperatrice." S. P. Oliver 



October 5 



Change of Colour in Frogs 



Can any of your readers tell me if it is a fact that frogs 

 change their colour before a change takes place in the weather ? 



A few days ago I was told at a village in Worcestershire, during 

 heavy rain, that it would be fine to-morrow because a frog had 

 been seen turning yellow. The fine weather came. I was 

 informed that frogs become dark-coloured before wet weather 

 sets in. W. J. Chamberlayne 



Junior United Service Club, September 30 



[" The changes which the colour of the frog undergoes both 

 in intensity and hue imva.\Yi<tvariation of temperature, the presence 

 and absence of light . . . although certainly much less striking 

 and considerable, are scarcely less varied than those exhibited by 

 the chameleon."— Bell, "British Reptiles."] 



SUBJECT-INDEXES TO TRANSACTIONS OF 



LEARNED SOCIETIES^ 

 ■\XrE all remember the excellent paper read at the 

 ''» Oxford Conference by Mr. J. B. Bailey, sub- 

 librarian at the Radcliffe Library, upon the advantage of 

 a subject-index to scientific periodicals. Mr. Bailey 

 spoke with just praise of the splendid alphabetical cata- 

 logue issued by the Royal Society, but observed that 

 from the nature of the case this is " nearly useless in 

 making a bibliography of any given subject, unless one is 

 familiar with the names of all the authors who have 

 written thereon." This is manifestly the case. As an 

 illustration both of the value and the defi^ciencies of the 

 Royal Society's index, I may mention that while on the 

 one hand it has enabled me to discover that my father, 

 chiefly celebrated as a philologist, has written a paper on 

 the curious and perplexing subject of the formation of 

 ice at the bottoms of rivers, the existence of which was 

 wholly unknown to his family, it does not, on the other 



' By Richard Garnett, Superintendent of the Reading Room, British 

 Museum. _ Read at the March monthly meeting of the Library Association 

 of the United Kingdom. Contributed by the Author.^ 



hand, assist me to ascertain, without a most tedious 

 search, what other writers may have investigated the 

 subject, or consequently how far his observations are in 

 accordance with theirs. Multiply my little embarrass- 

 ment by several hundred thousand, and you will have 

 some idea of the amount of ignorance which the classified 

 index suggested by Mr. Bailey would enlighten. We 

 may well believe that the only objection he has heard 

 alleged is the magnitude of the undertaking, and must 

 sympathise with his conviction that, granting this, it still 

 ought not to be put aside merely because it is difficult. I 

 hope to point out, however, that so far as concerns the 

 scientific papers, to which alone Mr. Bailey's proposal 

 relates, the difficulty has been over-estimated, that the 

 literary compilation need encounter no serious obstacle, 

 and that the foundation might be laid in a short time by 

 a single competent workman, such as Mr. Bailey himself. 

 Of an index to literary papers I shall speak subsequently ; 

 and, there, I must acknowledge, the difficulties are much 

 more formidable. But as regards scientific papers, it 

 appears to me that the only considerable impediment is 

 the financial. When the others are overcome, then, and 

 not till then, we shall be in a favourable position for over- 

 coming this also. The reason why the formation of a 

 classified index to scientific papers is comparatively easy, 

 is that the groundwork has been already provided by the 

 alphabetical index of the Royal Society. We have the 

 titles of all scientific papers from 1800 to 1865 before 

 us, and shall soon have them to 1873. Though it mis;ht 

 be interesting, it is not essential to go further back. We 

 have now to consider how best to distribute this alpha- 

 betical series into a number of subject-indexes. To take 

 the first step we merely require a little money (the first 

 condition of success in most undertakings), and some 

 leisure on the part of a gentleman competent to distin- 

 guish the grand primary divisions of scientific research 

 from each other, and avoid the errors which cataloguers 

 have been known to commit in classing the star-fish with 

 constellations, and confusing Plato the philosopher with 

 Plato a volcano in the moon. I need only say that very 

 many of our body would bring far more than this neces- 

 sary minimum of scientific knowledge to the task. I 

 may instance Mr. Bailey himself. The money would be 

 required to procure two copies of the alphabetical index 

 (which, however, the Royal Society would very likely 

 present), and to pay an assistant for cutting these two 

 copies up into strips, each strip containing a single en:ry 

 of a scientific paper, and pasting the same upon card- 

 board. It would be necessary to have two copies of the 

 alphabetical catalogue, as this is printed on both sides of 

 the paper ; and as the name of the writer is not repeated 

 at the head of each of his contributions, and would there- 

 fore have to be written on the card, close supervision 

 would be required, or else a very intelligent workman. 

 When this was done, the entire catalogue would 

 exist upon cards, in a movable form instead of an 

 immovable. The work of the arranger or arrangers 

 would now begin. All that he or they would have 

 to do would be to write somewhere upon the card, 

 say in the left hand upper corner, the name of the 

 broad scientific division, such as astronomy, ineteorology, 

 geology, to which the printed title pasted upon the card 

 appertained, and to put each into a box appropriated to 

 its special subject, preserving the alphabetical order of 

 each division. We should then have the classed index 

 already in the rough, at a very small relative expenditure 

 of time, money, and labour. For the purposes of science, 

 however, a more minute subdivision would be necessary. 

 Here the functions of our Council would come into play, 

 and it would have a great opportunity of demonstrating 

 its usefulness as an organising body by inducing, whether 

 by negotiation with individuals or with scientific corpora- 

 tions like the Royal Society, competent men of science to 

 undertake the task of classifying the papers relating to 



