*~ 
Fan. 11, 1883 | 
to generation, certain habits prevailing in certain communities in 
consequence neither of inherited instincts nor of individual 
experience, but simply because the young ones imitate what they 
see in their elder fellows? 
As is well known, the stingless honey-bees (J/e/ifona and 
Trigona) build horizontal combs consisting of a single layer of 
cells, which, if there is plenty of space, are of rather regular 
shape, the peripheral cells being all at about the same distance 
from the first built central one. Now, on February 4, 1874, I 
met with a nest of a small Trigona (‘‘ Abelha preguicosa”’) ina 
very narrow hole of an old canella-tree, where, from want of 
space they were obliged to give to their combs a very irregular 
shape, corresponding to the transversal section of the hole. 
These bees lived with me, in a spacious box, about a year (till 
February 10, 1875), when perhaps not a single bee survived of 
those which had come from the canella-tree; but notwithstanding 
they yet continued to build irregular combs, while quite re- 
gular ones were built by several other communities of the same 
species, which I have had. 
The following case is still more striking. In the construction 
of the combs for the raising of the young, as well as of the large 
cells for guarding honey and pollen, our Afedi~one and Trigone 
do not use pure wax, but mix it with various resinous and other 
substances, which give to the wax a peculiar colour and smell, 
Now I had brought home from two different and distant locali- 
ties two communities of our most common JZé/ifona (allied to 
MM. marginata), of which one had dark reddish-brown, and the 
other pale yellowish-brown wax, they evidently employing resin 
from different trees. They lived with me for many years, and 
either community continued, in their new home, to gather the 
same resins as before, though now, when they stood close 
together, any tree was equally accessible to the bees of either 
community. This can hardly be attributed to inherited instinct, 
as both belonged to the same species, nor to individual expe- 
rience about the usefulness of the several resins (which seemed 
to serve equally well), but only, as far as I can judge, to tradi- 
tion, each subsequent generation of young bees following the 
habits of their elder sisters. Fritz MUELLER 
Blumenau, St. Catharina, Brazil, November 14, 1882 
The Inventor of the Incandescent Electric Light 
In the ‘‘ Notes” of Nature, vol. xxvii. p. 209, M. de 
Chagny is described as ‘‘the first electrician who attempted to 
manufacture incandescent lamps zz vacuo about twenty years 
ago.” This invention and its successful practical application 
(irrespective of cost) was made by a young American, Mr. Starr, 
and patented by King in 1845. A short stick of gas-retort car- 
bon was used, and the vacuum obtained by connecting one end 
of this with a wire sealed through the top of a barometer tube 
blown out at the upper part, and the other end with a wire 
dipping into the mercury. The tube was about thirty-six 
inches long, and thus the enlarged upper portion became a 
torrecellian yacuum when the tube was filled and inverted. 
I had a share of one-eighth in the venture, assisted in 
making the apparatus and some of the experiments, and after 
the death of Mr. Starr all the apparatus was assigned tome. I 
showed this light (in the original lamp) publicly many times at 
the Midland Institute, Birmingham, and on two occasions in the 
Town Hall, all of them more than twenty years ago. The light 
was far more brilliant, and the carbon-stick more durable, than 
the flimsy threads of the incandescent lamps now in use. It was 
abandoned solely on account of the cost of supplying the power. 
As a steady, reliable, and beautiful light, its success was com- 
plete. In ‘‘ A Contribution to the History of Electric Lighting,” 
published in the Yournal of Science, November 5, 1879, and 
reprinted lately in my ‘Science in Short Chapters,” may be 
found further particulars concerning this invention and_ its 
inventor, W. MAttTisev WILLIAMS 
Stonebridge Park, N.W. 
The Reversion of Sunflowers at Night 
WHILE the fact that sunflowers turn their faces toward the 
sun in its course during the day is as old as our knowledge of 
the plant, I am not aware that any record has been made as to 
the time of night that they turn fo the east again after their 
obeisance to the setting sun. 
One evening during a short stay at a village in Colorado, in 
the summer of 1881, I took a walk along the banks of a large 
NATURE 
| 
241 
irrigating ditch just as the sun was setting. The wild variety of 
Helianthus annuus, Lin. (=H. lenticularis, Douglass) grew abun- 
dantly there, and I observed that the broad faces of all the 
flowers were, as is usual in the clear sunset, turned to the west. 
Returning by the same path less than an hour afterwards, and 
immediately after the daylight was gone, I found, to my sur- 
prise, that much the greater part of those flowers had already 
turned their faces full to the east in an icipation, as it were, of 
the sun’s rising, 
They had in that short time retraced the semi-circle, in the 
traversing of which with the sun they had spent the whole day. 
Both the day and night were cloudless, and apparently no un- 
usual conditions existed that might have exceptionally affected 
the movements of the flowers. 
Idoubt not that many persons like myself havesupposed that sun- 
flowers remain all night with their faces to the west, as they are 
when the sunlight leaves them, and until they are constrained by 
the light of the rising sun, to turn to the east again. It is not my 
purpose to offer any explanation of the cause of the phenomenon 
here recorded, but it seems to me improbable that it could have 
been an exceptional instance; and I only regret that no oppor- 
tunity has since occurred to me to repeat the observation. 
Washington, December 26 C, A. WHITE 
Pollution of the Atmosphere 
Mr, H. A. PHILLIPS, in NATURE, vol. xxvii. p. 127, thinks 
that the effect of the increasing quantity of hydrocarbons in the 
air from the combustion of coal will be to make climates more 
extreme. It seems to me the effect will be the direct contrary. 
Gaseous and vaporous hydrocarbons absorb heat much more 
powerfully than air, and whatever makes the atmosphere absorb 
and retain more solar heat than at present will tend to equalise 
temperatures between day and night, and also between different 
latitudes. I think, however, that any possible effect of hydro- 
carbons will be quite insignificant in comparison with the effect 
of the watery vapour of the atmosphere, which, as Tyndall has 
shown, moderates climates by its power of absorbing solar 
heat, JOSEPH JOHN MuRPHY 
Old Forge, Dunmurry, Co, Antrim, December 28, 1882 
A “Natural” Experiment in Complementary Colours 
ON page 79 of vol. i. of the “f Life, Letters and Journal of Sir 
Charles Lyell,” his visit to the Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen 
is described, and he notes that ‘fas the sun shone on the foam it 
took very much the rose-coloured tint so remarkable on the snow 
in the Alps.” 
His experience as regards the colour being observed in the 
full sunlight seems to differ from that of Mr. Chas. T. Whitmell, 
which you published in NATURE, vol. xxvi. p. 573. 
E, J. BLEs 
Moor End, Kersal, near Manchester, January 8 
BAIRDS’ HARE AND ITS HABITS 
EVERAL instances have been recorded in which indi- 
vidua] male mammals have produced milk from their 
mammary glands for the nutriment of their young. But 
that the young of a mammal should be ordinarily suckled 
by the male parent is such an extraordinary anomaly that 
it is very hard to believe it. Yet that such is the case in 
an American species of hare (Lefus bairdizZ) would seem 
to be highly probable from observations made by Dr. 
Hayden and his party during one of their expeditions in 
the Yellowstone Mountains. In the last number of the 
American Naturalist, Mr. Lockwood gives the following 
details on this curious subject :— 
“In the months of May and June, 1860, Prof. F. V. 
Hayden and his party of United States explorers found 
themselves up in the Alpine snows of the Wind River 
Mountains, where they were detained several days in an 
attempt to feel their way to the Yellowstone. On May 
31 Dr. Hayden declared that a new species of hare was 
around, as he had observed unusually large hare-tracks 
in the snow. As the Doctor expressed himself to us :— 
The tracks were very large, the feet being wide-spread, 
and the hair thick between the toes, thus really furnishing 
