MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 555 



I mentioned the incident in a letter home at the time, and in reply was in- 

 formed, on the authority of the Parish Clerk, that it was a well-known fact 

 that, if you cut an adder in two, the tail will follow the head. 



Also I found something like it in Lucretius, but the poet describes the head 

 as going in search of the tail, and not the tail of the head. 



The experiment is easy of repetition, but one does not often get the oppor- 

 tunity of pulling a lively snake in half, and there are obvious objections not 

 only on the score of cruelty. 



It would be interesting if some of our naturalists have any lore on the sub- 

 ject to communicate. 



E. J. EBDEN, I.C.S. 



Camp, Ahmednagar District, 



1st March, 1894. 



No. VIII.-FERTILIZATION OF THE VANILLA FLOWER 



BY BEES. 



"Autrefois l'elevage des abeilles constituait une industrie importante ; Cuba 

 exportait alors de grandes quantites de miel e*b de cire. Delaisse dans ce 

 dernieres annees, ce genre d'exploitation, encourage par les demandes croissantes 

 des consommateurs americains, reprend a nouveau et c'est par millions que se 

 chiffre l'exportation aux Etats-Unis." 



" Ce resultat en amene un autre. La reprise de l'apiculture a Cuba donne 

 une impulsion vigoureuse a la culture du vanillier, Duranta plumiere la 

 f econdation artificielle devenant inutile, affirme-t-on, et les abeilles y suppleant. 

 On s'est souvent demand e comment il se fait, alors que des capitaux immenses 

 sont engages, en Chine et aux Indes, dans la culture du the, que celle de la 

 vanille, bien autrement lucrative, quoique d'une consommation autrement 

 restreinte, attire si peu l'attention des planteurs. En gens pratiques les 

 Americains ont compris les grands benefices qu'elle pouvait donner aux 

 Antilles, ou le sol et le climat sont des plus favorables a cette liane originaire 

 du Mexique." 



VII. — Le monde Antilien. II. — Cuba, Puerto-rico, par M. C. de Varigny. 



Revue des Deux Mondes, 1st January, 1894, p. 185. 



For the benefit of members that do not happen to read French, I may say 

 that the pith of the passage quoted from the Revue des Deux Mondes is as 

 follows : — 



Formerly the Cubans, like other Vanilla cultivators in many tropical coun- 

 tries, had to fertilize their Vanilla flowers by hand, because the plant, an exotic 

 orchid, depends in its native country for fertilization on an insect that no one 

 had managed to induce to follow the plantjacross^seas. 



