174 
seen; the patch is an inch long and about a quarter of an inch 
in average width ; it has not the stellate cells of the rush. The 
material has been protected in a depression in one of the artifi- 
cial facets of the implement, and in a second position somewhat 
nearer the butt, there is further trace of the same material. My 
opinion is that these grass stems (or whatever stems they may 
be) were possibly wrapped round the basal end of the imple- 
ment as a protection for the hand against the asperities of the 
flint. The asperitizs are very noticeable in the instrument re- 
ferred to, as it has a sharp cutting edge at the butt, with none 
of the original bark of the flint left for convenience of holding. 
The vegetable material is undoubtedly as old as the implement, 
and the unabraded condition of the stone may account for its 
position in the facets. WORTHINGTON G, SMITH 
125, Grosvenor Road, Highbury, N. 
Awned Carpels of Erodium 
Sir JoHN Lussock’s address to the British Association, and 
Mr. Francis Darwin’s paper in the Linnean 7yamsactions, on 
the hygrometric awns of the achenes of Zrodium and other 
plants, fail to give the honour to the right man. Their refer- 
ences reach some thirteen years back; but if they will look 
further they will find the late discoveries (including those of 
Hildebrand and Zimmerman in Pringsheim’s Fahrbicher) fore- 
stalled as to Erodium by nearly half a century. In the A/aga- 
zine of Nalural History for 1836 is a modest contribution of 
nearly two pazes from Robert Mallet of Capell Street, Dublin, 
describing and figuring his observations on the achenial awns of 
Erodium moschatum and Pelargonium peltatum. Te finds that 
the awns of Zyrodium possess ‘‘ most wonderful hygrometric 
sensibility.” The five awns lie in grooves of the carpophore. 
He gives transverse views of the awns in various conditions of 
torsion, and of the carpophore (not as well executed as the simi- 
lar ones of F, Darwin and Hildebrand). He states that aridity 
causes the awns to twist, and so to extricate themselves from 
their grooves, and at the same time downy filaments bristle forth 
from the awns, aud the achenes detach themselves and fall to 
the ground, Here the awas still continue to twist and keep 
tumbling over, so as to recede from the parent plant. At la>t 
by twisting they become like balloons wafted about by every 
zephyr. But motive power has not ceased with the awn: the 
slighest hygrometric change produces motion either backwards 
or forwards in it; and the constant tendency of this motion is 
to screw the seed into the ground (Mr. Mallet’s italics), Such is 
the shape and great sensibility of the awns, that they may be 
readily applied to form most delicate hygrometers, for which 
purpose he had used them, Nearly all of these observations 
have been rediscovered and confirmed and published in elaborate 
form by the eminent investigators of our own day. 
Princeton College, November 13 G. MACLOSKIE 
The Song of the Lizard 
WHILsT quartered in St. Helena, at Ladder Hill, I was 
frequently disturbed by the ‘* ¢wees-¢weet” of a small lizard in the 
verandah and Melia trees which overshadowed it, which sounds 
for a long time I thought were produced by birds. It is, accord- 
inz to Melliss’ description, the ** Hemidactylus frenatus (Schieg.). 
—A small brown harmless lizard about four inches in length, 
which lives under stones and old timber in the warm lower parts 
of the island. It seldom enters houses unless in pursuit of flies 
or scorpions, but is plentiful about the neighbourhood of James- 
town, where in the evening its loud chirp is frequently heard.” 
This may corroborate Mr, Pascoe’s remarks in his letter to 
NATURE (vol. xxv. p. 32). S. P. OLIVER 
2, Eastern Villas, Anglesey, Gosport 
A Double Egg 
I HAVE received a very remarkable egg, or rather, I should 
say, a double egg, laid by a hen belonging to Mr, Isaac Sharman, 
of Kanmoor, Sheffield. The egg weighed 43 oz., and measured 
round its greatest circumference 8 inches, and its least 7 inches. 
In measuring the egg the shell was broken, and inside the outer 
shell there was no yoke but simply white of egg surrounding 
another perfect egg of the average size. This inner egg has the 
shell quite complete and hard. Mr. Sharman describes the bird 
as a cuckoo hen. E. HowartTH 
Sheffield Public Museam, December 12 
NATURE 
S40 * wht we: — seh t yal 
~ 
(Dec. 22, 1881 
SIR ANTONIO BRADY 
he is always with a keen feeling of regret that we record 
the loss from the scientific ranks of men whose faces, 
as well as their names, were familiar to us by long associa- 
tion, and who were for years fellow-workers in the same 
geological area. Such a one was Sir Antonio Brady, 
F.G.S.,who passed from among us on the 12th inst. from 
an affection of the heart. 
He was the eldest son of the late Mr. Anthony Brady, 
of the Royal William Victualling Yard, Plymouth, by his 
marriage with Marianne, daughter of Mr. Francis Perigal. 
Born in 1811 he entered the Civil Service of the Navy as 
a junior clerk in the Victualling Yard, Deptford, more 
than fifty years since. After serving in various offices, 
having been promoted to head-quarters, he became head 
of the Contract Office and Registrar of Public Securities 
in 1854, subsequently assisting to reorganise that office. 
After the reorganisation of the office he was appointed 
first superintendent of the Purchase and Contract De- 
partment, retiring from the service in 1870, when he 
received the honour of knighthood. Since his retirement 
from the public service, Sir Antonio has devoted his 
energies to the service of the public, and having taken a 
leading part in the preservation of Epping Forest for the 
people, was appointed a judge in the “ Verderer’s Court 
for the Forest of Epping.” Healso took great interest 
in the work of church extension, and was a member of 
the Ray, the Palzeontographical and Geological Societies ; 
he was also in the Commission of the Peace for West- 
minster. The deceased married, in 1837, Maria, eldest 
daughter of the late Mr. George Kelner, of Ipswich, by 
whom he leaves a son, the Rev. Nicholas Brady, M.A., 
and two daughters. 
But it is in his character of a geologist that we must 
now speak of Sir Antonio Brady. So long ago as 1844 
his attention was attracted to the wonderful deposits of 
brickearth which occupy the Valley of the Roding at 
Ilford, within a mile of his residence. Encouraged by 
Prof. Owen and other eminent palzontologists, he com- 
menced to collect the rich series of mammalian remains 
which the Thames Valley brickearths yield. Owing, how- 
ever, to their porous nature, the bones had lost, during 
their long interment, all their gelatine, and the earlier 
“ finds,” when exhumed, were so sott and friable that they 
crumbled beneath the touch, and it was not uatil fresh 
gelatine had been introduced that it was found possible to 
preserve these mag iificent remains of the old inhabitants 
of this district. In his Catalogue of the Pleistocene Mam- 
malia from Ilford, Essex (1874, 4to, printed for private 
circulation only) Sir Antonio Brady pays a just tribute of 
respect to the genius and ability of his first instructor in 
the art of preserving fossil bones, and acknowledges that 
he was indebted to Mr. William Davies, F.G.S., of the 
British Museum, for the preservation of most of the 
larger specimens in his collection. 
Some idea may be formed of the enormous riches of 
this deposit when we find that an amateur, in his leisure 
hours, was able to amass nearly one thousand specimens 
of Mammalia from a single locality, comprising: Feézs 
spelea, Canis vulpes, Ursus, sp., Elephas primigenius, E. 
antiguus, Rhinoceros leptorhinus, R.megarhinus, R. ticho- 
rhinus, Equus fossilts, Megaceros Hibernicus, Cervus 
elaphus ; C. sp.; Bison priscus; Bos giganteus, Hippopo- 
tamus, sp. To this interesting series of fossil remains 
of the old fauna of the Thames Valley, we may add that 
the subsequent researches of Prof. Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., 
and R. W. Cheadle, Esq., F.G.S., have added the 
“ Musk-ox,” Ovibos Moschatus, and the labours of 
F. C. J. Spurrell, Esq., F.G.S., the ‘““Lemming.” We 
have thus presented to us in this area the conjunction of 
the Northern and Southern forms of land-animals as 
marvellous as that which modern London exhibits to-day, 
in its assemblage of specimens of the genus Homo, from 
