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NA TURE 



[February 20, 190: 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 

 [ The Editor does not hold himseif responsible for opinions ex- 

 pressed by his loii'espondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to (oi respond with the writers of, rejefiel 

 ;nanuscripts intended for this or any other part of NaTUKE. 

 No notice is taien of anonvnioits communications.^ 



Huxley's Review of the "Vestiges of Creation." 

 L\ the " Life and Letters" of Charles Darwin (vol. ii. p. 

 1S9), Mr. Huxley wrote: — "The only review I ever had 

 qualms of conscience about, on the ground of needless savagery, 

 is one I wrote on the Vestiges." 



Can any of your readers inform me where Huxley's review of 

 the "Vestiges of Creation" was published? I imagine it to 

 have been written about 1853-54. Francis Darwin. 



Botanical Laboratory, Cambridge, February 13. 



Birds attacking Butterflies and Moths. 



Pkoi". Poui.lON has asked me to recall any observations of 

 my own of the attacks of birds upon butterflies. Unless one 

 makes a note at the time of occurrence it is seldom one can 

 recall to mind any particular instance of the kind, although it is 

 not so rare as it appears ; but of the two following instances I 

 have still a vivid recollection. The first occurred during the 

 beginning of August 1I592, near Wokingham, Berks. : I was 

 chasing a Clouded Yellow {Colias edusa, Fabr. ), the first seen of 

 the autumn brood, so that I was all the more eager to capture 

 it, when much to my chagrin a Spotted Flycatcher (Musciiapn 

 ^risola, L. ) darted from a fence and caught it. The other obser- 

 vation was made during the summer of 1897 and deals with one 

 of out common moths, which I am aware are more frequently 

 attacked than butterflies. Whilst proceeding along the Cowley 

 Road, Oxford, I saw a Mouse Sparrow [Passer domesticus, L. ), 

 making frantic efforts to capture a noctuid moth which seemed 

 to be a Turnip Moth (Agrotis segetiiin, Schiff. ). The peculiar 

 way in which the moth seemed to roll over and over in the 

 dusty road and the eagerness of the sparrow, together with the 

 loud chirping which it kept up all the lime, caused quite a small 

 knot of spectators to assemble to watch the apparently unequal 

 contest, and when at last the moth baffled its pursuer and Hew 

 away there was an audible murmur of applause. 



22 Southfield Road, Oxford. A. H. Ham.m. 



Having seen .some correspondence in the last two numbers 

 of N.\Tt'Ri! on birds attacking butterflies, I think the following 

 may be of interest. 



Early in June, igoo, when fishing at Belleek, co. Fermanagh, 

 I noted on several evenings very heavy "hatches" of one of 

 the larger sedge flies (I'iiryganea sp.), locally known as the wall- 

 fly. On these evenings large numbers of gulls would come in 

 Irom the coast, four miles distant, and steadily hawk up and 

 down the river and neighbouring meadows, taking the fly eagerly. 

 Subsequently, when the May fly was "up" on Lough Erne, it 

 was common throughout the day to see flocks of gulls similarly 

 employed, and this habit was so well known to many of the 

 local gillies that it was no uncommon thing to fish first that 

 part of the loch where the birds were busiest. A friend of 

 mine — a good field naturalist — informs me that he has frequently 

 seen sparrows, and on one occasion a greenfinch, catching 

 butterflies which, so far as he remembers, were cabbage whites. 

 C. (;. Seligmann. 



St. Thomas's Hospital, February 14. 



As this subject is again interesting your readers, I would 

 repeat that both my gardenjr and myself have independently 

 observed robins capture and swallow the large cabbage white 

 butterfly. Howard Fox. 



Rosehill, Falmouth, February iS. 



King Og's Bed. 



I SEE that Mr. Wells, in his interesting discourse on "The 

 Discovery of the Future," mentions "a sort of bed of King Og, 

 to which all expressions must he lopped or stretched." We are 

 told in Numbers that King Og had an iron bedstead, which was 

 9 cubits long and 4 cubits broad. But 1 cannot find that he put 

 his bedstead to the use suggested by .Mr. Wells. Is it possible 

 that this gentlemen's memory is at fault, and that he is confusing 

 King Og with the ancient Greek robber Procrustes, who was 



NO. 1686, VOL. 65] 



accustomed to torture his captives by stretching them if they 

 were too short for his bed, and by lopping oflf portions of their 

 legs if they were too long to fit the bed? T. B. S. 



Edinburgh, February 10. 



" T. B. S." is quite right. I regret very much that I did not 

 verify my quotatirm. A confusion of Og's bed and the lopping 

 propensities of Adoni-Bezek seems to have decayed to the like- 

 ness of Procrustes. I have lived in thiserror firyears. I have 

 often used the image of King Og's bed in conversation and, I 

 think, in published matter. No one has ever detected my slip, 

 and it is by no means impossible that I am the centre of propa- 

 gation uf a mistake that will turn up again. H. G. Wei.I-S, 



The Severn Bore. 



DuRiNi; the past three years I have been observing the bore 

 on the Severn, and have taken several measurements of the 

 leading wave, or " head " as it is called here, as well as of the 

 speed of the stream. 



The river at Newnham being considerably wider than it is at 

 Stonebench, where Dr. \'aughan Cornish made his observations, 

 or at the Denny, where Mr. Whitmell was stationed, the phen- 

 omenon is not so remarkable — the speed is less and the height is- 

 lower. 



Unluckily, since February 12, 1S99, the heads for some 

 reason or another have been comparatively low ; none have since 

 that date attained to 4 ft. 2 in., the height then measured. I 

 was fortunate to obtain a photograph, which was published in 

 the Graphic of February 18, 1899, but owing to the lack of light, 

 for the best bores come up early in the morning, the plate was- 

 underexposed. 



The popular idea of the height is greatly exaggerated ; 6 ft. is 

 stated to be not uncommon when a south-west wind is blowing, 

 but during last September the maximum measured by me was 

 2-1 ft. and the speed 52 miles per hour (330 yards in 2 mins.. 

 10 sees.). 



Mr. Whitmell refers to the sound of the approaching bore 

 being audible for some distance. It is a weird and grand 

 sight during the moonlit September evenings to see the white 

 line of foam advancing up the long stretch ot river above Newn- 

 ham, and the sound of the approaching ma.ss of water is heard 

 for more than a mile away, long before anything is to be seen. 



Whatever may be the safety of a small boat on the upper 

 reaches, it is not considered safe to be in a boat when the tide 

 comes up here, and not many years ago two fishermen were- 

 upset with their boat and drowned below Awre. 



The increase of speed above Newnham is always attributed to 

 the narrowing of the stream and to the greater steepness of the- 

 banks, but neither here nor at the Denny have I ever seen any- 

 thing approaching to seventeen miles per hour. 



There is another phenomenon to be seen at Newnham which- 

 does not occur higher up, namely the formation of "racers," or 

 scries of waves caused by the flowing of the rapid current over 

 the sandbanks. These " racers " occur in rhythmical order as 

 the channel fills up, and at some few minutes after the head has 

 passed, lasting only for a short time at any one spot, ceasing as 

 soon as the water has reached a certain depth : they are violent 

 in their action, and leave a record behind them in the shape of 

 an alteration in the configuration of the sandbank over which 

 they have surged and boiled whilst the water in midchannel 

 rapidly but smoothly rises in level. K. W. Prevost. 



Newnham, February 15. 



Squilla desmaresti. 



SiiOKTi.v after the publication of my note in the Journal of 

 the Marine Biological .Vssociation, on the appearance of this 

 stomatopod in the North Sea, I received a specimen from Mr. 

 W. VV. Dunlop, who informed me that it had been taken off 

 Selsea Bill. Further inquiry resulted in my learning that it 

 was taken "about the second week in April last year." Some 

 three or four other specimens have lately been taken in the 

 neighbourhood, where it was till now unknown. 



It would be well to call attention to this fact soon, so that 

 fishermen may try to find out if last years appearance was extra- 

 ordinary, or the result of better or luckier observation. 



I may point out that an element in the case is the temperature 

 of the water. F. Jeitrey Bei.i . 



British Museum (Natural History) 



