174 OTHEK ANIMALS 



The naturalist Hickson was, I think, the first to dis- 

 cover the lung-breathing fishes in the Eastern Archipelago. 

 Romance to some naturalists seems to be the imp of vul- 

 garity, and accordingly Hickson made his book so dull 

 and pedantic that he successfully disguised the fact that 

 he was a kind of Columbus of animal life. 



The rotifers or wheel-animalcules are another example 

 of the tenacity of life on a lower scale of being. Water- 

 animals, they can not only endure the extremes of 

 drought but of heat. Specimens have been placed in a 

 chamber heated up to 200 deg. F., and revived when the 

 chamber was moistened. The eggs of the brine shrimp 

 (Artemia salina) survive for years in salt crystals drained 

 of water ; those of the fairy shrimp (Chirocephalus) and 

 of the freshwater crustacean Apus are able to resist desic- 

 cation. Yet Apus, once very numerous in the South of 

 England, has, according to Dr. Caiman, become utterly 

 extinct there a strange contradiction. The reason seems 

 to be that it is parthenogenetic, a degenerate condition of 

 reproduction. Its supreme vitality was countered and 

 overborn by a lapse into an unprogressive specialization, 

 contrary to one of vitality's most imperious laws. 



INTELLIGENT WASPS 



Apropos of the interesting letters concerning wasps in 

 your issue of September 30, I should very much like to 

 know if it is a general thing for wasps to attack and 

 apparently devour cotton material. This summer I was 

 shown two calico curtains pierced with fair-sized holes as 

 if they had been riddled by shot. The owner of the 

 cottage in Bucks where this occurred told me that her 

 attention was first drawn to the curtains by a curious 

 clicking sound made by the wasp as it cut away the stuff ; 

 there were sometimes two or three of the insects working 

 together on the curtains. Finally the whole surface of 



