439 
NORTHERN NEWS 
‘Answers to correspondents.—G. Fish. Of course the mussel belongs 
to the animal kingdom, as all other fish do. Editor, Hull Daily News.’ 
M. Gustave-F. Dollfus has an interesting article, ‘La Géologie il y a 
cent ane, en Engleterre,’ in ‘La Feuille Des Jeunes Naturalistes’ for 
November. 
According to Dr. F. Ameghino, of the La Plata Museum, South America 
was the birth-place of the human race, and he traces man back to Miocene 
opossums ! 
We are pleased to learn, from a contemporary, that the illustrations in 
the ‘Birds of Yorkshire’ ‘evidence wonderful patience in the field and 
laboratory skill.’ 
From a Hull Newspaper. ‘Time was when the Annual Conversazione 
of the Hull Literary and Philosophical Society’ was held ‘amid the bones 
of whales and other amphibious monsters.’ 
A train carrying a travelling menagerie recently was wrecked, and 
caught fire. The elephants filled their trunks at a neighbouring stream, 
and ran backwards and forwards and eventually extinguished the flames. 
It was in America. 
Two men were experimenting with a Chameleon ; they placed it on sur- 
faces of blue and white and green, with the normal results. At last the 
diabolical idea occurred to them of placing it upon a tartan shawl, with the 
result that the poor thing died in ten minutes of nervous exhaustion ! 
The ‘Lancashire Naturalist’ (No. 5), under the head of ‘ Lancashire 
Naturalists of Note,’ has an account of Mr. W. A. Parker, F.G.S., who has 
done so much amongst the fossils from the Coal-Measures of Sparth Bottoms. 
We learn that ‘his motto has always been ‘‘ Love of the work with hard and 
persistent effort.” ” 
Some Museums seem to have all the luck. In the will of the late Miss 
A. Mason is the following :—‘ I also give to the said Corporation of Notting- 
ham for the said Art Museum the last Mule Canary that travelled from 
Nottingham to the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, on the (almost) 
last ‘Sold times coach,” driven by ‘‘ Old Joe Pearson” (as the next visit I 
made to Loughborough, Leicester, was by railway). Also the two gadflies 
which were also in the same glass case as the Canaries, and were caught 
at Prince Albert’s Exhibition in 1851 at Hyde Park.’ 
Under ‘ Notes on Flowering Plants’ a Lancashire contemporary has the 
following information :—‘ Adder’s Tongue consists of a single leaf with a 
slender spike of seeds rising from its bottom, which is supposed to resemble 
the tongue of the serpent... The Moonwort.—‘ The stalk is round, firm, and 
thick ; it is nakedin the middle, and there grows the leaf, which is composed, 
as it were, of several pairs of small ones, or rather, is a whole and single 
leaf indented deeply, so as to resemble a number of smaller; these are 
rounded and hollowed, and thence came its name of Moonwort.’ Evidently 
the moon has something to do with it! 
The October ‘ Bradford Scientific Journal’ is a particularly good number. 
Of local interest are ‘The Bradford Botanical Garden,’ by W. P. Winter, 
and ‘The Status of the Polecat in the Bradford District,’ by H. B. Booth, 
and there are several shorter notes. The Polecat is evidently scarce in the 
Bradford area; and one ‘probably true Polecat’ was ‘captured and killed,’ and 
whilst the men were inspecting its retreat it got up and slowly dragged itself 
away / There are some so-called ‘ Science Notes, Past, Present, Future,’ 
which are certainly not worth the space they occupy. In referring to the 
spelling of a certain moor near Ilkley a correspondent informs us that 
‘Whichis’ the correct spelling. It may be so, but we should not have 
thought it. 
1g07 December 1. 
