December 23, 1922] 



NA TURE 



837 



sill. He carefully removed part of the waxen covering 

 of one of the little groups of larvae, inserted a grub 

 taken fresh from a hive, and covered the whole again 

 roughly, " expecting that the bees would complete 

 the repairs, and so seal up the intruder with the others. 

 But they were not to be cheated in this way, and they 

 would not repair the broken wax until they had smelt 

 out the stranger, whom they dragged out and carried 

 outside the nest, after which they replaced the breach 

 in the usual way." He made the experiment several 

 times, but with no better success. He then placed 

 some hive-bee eggs among a little group just deposited 

 by the humble-bee queen. The bees seemed to be 

 rather puzzled. " One or two of them took them up 

 somewhat aimlessly, and again replaced them as if 

 they hardly liked to openly accuse their sovereign of 

 misconduct, which they seemed to suspect." After 

 some hesitation they proceeded, apparently with con- 

 siderable relish, to eat the eggs. " So appreciative did 

 they become of the flavour of these new-laid eggs that 

 they would soon accept them readily when I offered 

 them at the end of a needle." 



Observations on a captive queen humble-bee 

 supplied with an empty nest were also interesting. 

 She spent several days beating against the window- 

 pane and then gave it up entirely ; she showed great 

 interest in brightly coloured objects like brass handles, 

 gilt labels on books, and waistcoat buttons. But she 

 was particularly intrigued by the keyhole of the door, 

 into which she would try to squeeze herself. Appar- 

 ently it " suggested " the opening into an under- 

 ground nest. 



In the essay on hares there is an interesting para- 

 graph. " It is a moot question whether the hare is 

 a rabbit which has taken to the open or the rabbit 

 a degenerate hare which has obtained comparative 

 safety by taking to a stupid life in the earth. It is an 

 interesting fact in this connexion, and one not often 

 remarked on by observers, that a hare, if it finds an 

 obstacle it wishes to get rid of, will naturally scratch 

 with its front legs with considerable strength and 

 with exactly the same movement as a rabbit. Thus, 

 although the hare lives in the open grass country, 

 never takes to earth, and much dislikes ground in- 

 fested by rabbits, it has to all appearance latent in its 

 muscles the beginning of an instinct which might be 

 developed into the rabbit's capacity for burrowing." 



Of its kind the picture of a midsummer night is 

 difficult to beat ; it is as well drawn as Richard 

 Jefferies could have done it. Take the sounds : the 

 churr of the night-jar, calling to his mate ; the under- 

 tone of the hundred rills and the swollen river ; the 

 warning stamp of rabbits that have been disturbed in 

 their feeding ; the strident love-note of the corn- 

 no. 2773, VOL. no] 



crake ; the shrill cry of the partridge ; the night- 

 ingale singing to his mate on her nest ; and then the 

 larks, the thrushes, the twittering swallows as the 

 fringes of the night overlap the coming day. It is 

 not merely a well-drawn picture ; it is a reflective 

 appreciation. 



What Mr. Kidd has to say about animal behaviour 

 is always interesting. Obeying the law of parsimony 

 he will press the simplest re-description as far as it 

 will go, and yet he cautions us that " the more the 

 subject is closely studied the less the observer finds 

 himself inclined to accept ready explanations." A 

 young sheldrake, fed on dry ground, went through a 

 kind of dancing or prancing movement, stamping 

 rapidl}' on the floor with its feet. Darwin connected 

 this with the sheldrake's habit of patting the sand or 

 mud near the worm-burrows on the seashore flats. 

 The stamping is supposed to " make the worm come 

 to the surface," and so the sheldrake keeps on stamp- 

 ing. But Mr. Kidd points out that it is the way of 

 young wild duck in general to stand in the shallow 

 water and stamp gently and rapidly on the muddy 

 bottom. This makes an eddy bringing up food- 

 particles which are then seized and devoured. Three- 

 days-old ducklings, hatched under a domestic hen, 

 exhibit the movements to perfection. Perhaps the 

 sheldrake's stamping is merely a slight modification 

 of a piece of instinctive behaviour general among 

 ducks. But in the opposite direction, Mr. Kidd makes 

 out a good case for refraining from any simplicist inter- 

 pretation of the behaviour of a collie dog. We fail 

 utterly unless we take into account its ancestry, for 

 it was one of a pack, a social unit. " The dog has 

 probably still some sort of conception of his place as 

 member of a co-operative group, and of his master as 

 the wise and resourceful leader of it." The other 

 essays discuss sea-trout, eels, frogs, birds, squirrels, 

 and the like. All are illuminating and all are 

 delightful. 



Metallography in the Workshop. 



Steel Thermal Treatment. By J. W. Urquhart. Pp. 

 xv + 336. (London: Crosby Lockwood and Son, 

 1922.) 35JT. net. 



NEARLY all the books which have hitherto been 

 written on the heat treatment of steels are the 

 work of metallurgists. The interesting thing about 

 the present work is that it has been written by a man 

 engaged in the production of machinery and various 

 steel components and tools in his workshops in Leicester. 

 As he states, he has been forced to put into practical 

 use all the recently introduced processes employed in 



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