A SINGULAR APPLIANCE. 75 



variable in form and size (Fig. 17). In catching it great 

 care is required, for it is so easily crushed; it is, besides, 



very soft to the touch, though, when examined 

 (8|v jrjk 

 W\(fj with a microscope, it is seen to bristle all 



over with hairs, apparently very hard. 



Our podurtz have also the faculty of 

 FIG. 17. leaping, and cling by thousands to humid 

 places, especially to mosses and the under-surface of 

 stones. The mechanism of their leap is explained by the 

 presence of a forked, flexible, and elastic appendage, 

 lodged in a kind of ventral groove beneath the last 

 segments; by projecting this rapidly behind, the whole 

 body of the animal is thrown forward. At the slightest con- 

 tact the insect folds up its caudal appendage under its belly, 

 and you would then suppose it did not possess one. This 

 circumstance explains why, in many books of natural history 

 of good repute, the podurcz, and especially so common a 

 species as the Podura plumbea^ are represented without this 

 characteristic instrument. 



HERBACEOUS PLANTS WHICH BEST ENDURE THE COLD 

 OF WINTER. 



The " way to look at things/' which is the true foundation 

 of science, varies, not only according to a man's degree of 

 intellectual cultivation, but according to his social condition 

 or profession. The herborist has eyes only for the plants in 

 which he deals, the "simples" which, as we read in old 

 Gerarde, wrought such wonderful cures in the days of our 



