Feb. 5, 1880] 



NA TURE 



325 



awkward looking fa-hion. I must have stayed and watched 

 them for about twenty minutes, when out came the spider and 

 descended the single line to the beetle, on which he boldly 

 rushed ; after a few seconds the beetle's struggles go: weaker 

 and weaker, when the spider returned to its den ; in a few- 

 seconds more the straggles of the beetle ceased. Now, did the 

 spider intend the beetle for its food when he cut away his web 

 to save it from destruction from the beetle's struggles, or 

 was that an after-thought, or why should he know it was a 

 "creature comfort"? and was the fact of the line being so near 

 the ground an accident, or was it premeditated ? If you put a 

 small pebble or small piece of wood in a web, a spider will let 

 it drop altogether ; if you put a grasshopper in it he rapidly turns 

 it round till the creature looks like a mummy ; but I suppose 

 circumstances alter cases even with spiders. 



James R. Gregory 



The following fact may be of interest to those of your readers 

 who are connected with the correspondence in your columns 

 regarding the possession of intellect by brutes. 



Having been much worried by the depredations of bandicoots 

 (Mus giganteus) I laid three pieces of bread f< r them smeared 

 with Roth and Ringeisen's phosphor paste. Next morning the 

 pieces of bread were found near the door where they had been 

 placed but turned upside dawn. The bandic >ot evidently was 

 suspicious of the poison, had turned over the bread and nibbled 

 away all the sound portion. On the next night I sneared the 

 poison on very thin slices of bread, leaving hardly any of it free 

 from the paste. On this occasion the caution of the bandicoot 

 seems to have deserted it, for the bread was eaten, and the dead 

 animal was found next day in the garden. 



Bangalore, India, January 8 ELPHINSTONE Begbie 



Suicide of the Scorpion 



Apiopos of the discussion on this point that has lately taken 

 place in Nature, will you allow me to say that I tried the 

 experiment referred to therein a score of times at least during 

 my long residence in India, and that I never saw the pheno- 

 menon so graphically delineated by Byron. My experiments 

 were conducted in cholera and other camps, in the open air, 

 often in the presence of others, and always under circumstances 

 which could admit of no doubt. The c inclusion I caaie to in 

 the matter was that "the scorpion girt by fire" is too stupid or 

 too cowardly a creature to " cure its pain by darting its sting," 

 or anything else, " into its desperate brain." It either rushed 

 blindly into the flames at once, and was then and there destroyed, 

 or it wandered meaninglessly about the margin of " the circle," 

 recoiling nervously from the actual contact, or retiring as far as 

 it could from the heat, to resume, after a short respite, its old 

 manoeuvres. I believe as the result of the-e inquiries that the 

 impression or belief created by the fine imagery of the great 

 poet is a myth and nothing more. Wm. Curran 



Warrington 



WILL Mr. Gillman or some other tell us /<«;■ scorpions achieve 

 suicide? The animal stings, as I know to my c 1st, by a back- 

 ward lash out and straightening of the tail, and the force which 

 drives the somewhat blunt point into the enemy goes on accumu- 

 lating as the reversal becomes more complete, and reaches its 

 maximum on or near the horizontal plane an 1 at the furthest 

 point of extension. But when the tail is drawn back above the 

 animal's head, the point is turned upwards, and therefore away 

 from the head, and even if it could be turned towards the head, 

 there is no possible force to drive it through the tough or hard 

 carapace. 



Can a man pummel his own back ? Can a horse kick its own 

 belly? But the feat attributed to the scorpion, apart fn 

 moral obliquity, is physically even more triumphant. B. 



Stags' Horns 



Observing in a late number of Nature a communication 

 concerning the disappearance of stags' horns after being cast 

 off, and a request for information upon the subject from 

 whatever source it might be had, I venture to send the 

 following : — 



A few winters ago I spent some weeks in the woods of 

 Georgia, where most of my time was devoted to deer-hunting. 



In roaming over the woody hummccks of that country I sev \il 

 times stumbled upon the cast-off antlers of bucks. Being, like 

 your correspondent, impressed with the popular belief that these 

 s buried 01 in some way destroyed by the animals, I 

 inquired of old hunters if it was of common occurrence to meet 

 with them, and was told that they were not rarely found just as 

 we had seen them upon the occasion in question. I suppose that 

 the popular belief in their burial or destruction arose out of the 

 fact that about the time for shedding their horns the bucks 

 retire to the most secluded spots accessible so as to avoid dis- 

 turbance by other bucks or any enemy during the first few 

 days of the tender, velvety stage of the new horns, and intosnch 

 retired places man does not commonly venture. 



This brings to mind the similar habit which prevails among 

 mo-t crustaceans. The edible crab of this region, for example, 

 waits for a very high tide, and goes with it far inland, where, in 

 shelter of some dark nook, and quite away from its common 

 enemies, it slips off the old shell and spends a few hours on land 

 awaiting the hardening process of the new one before entering 

 again into the struggles of life. The fishermen have learned, 

 however, that the most favourable times for catching soft crabs is 

 connected with certain phases of the moon, to which they attri- 

 bute some mysterious influence upon the crabs directly ; of course 

 the dependence of tides and moon solves this little mystery. 



Bolling W. Barton 



Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., January 22 



MOUNTAIN BUILDING 1 



FEW problems in physical geology are more fascinating 

 than that which deals with the origin of mountains. 

 At the same time few present greater difficulties. In the 

 first place it is absolutely necessary to ascertain the fa ts 

 of mountain structure before proceeding to frame any 

 theory to account for them. Yet to do this involves an 

 amount of mere physical toil which of itself raises a for- 

 midable impediment to progress. For the mountains cannot 

 be understood from a distance. One may not intuitively 

 interpret them by merely looking at them from below. They 

 must be climbed and scrutinised in detail from crest to 

 ctcst and valley to valley. But to be able to understand 

 what one sees in these elevated regions, one must have 

 an eve that has been well trained in the observation of 

 geological structure, and which, while losing sight of no 

 essential detail, can yet detect the dominant lines anyd 

 the apparent disarray of crag and scar, slope and pin- 

 nacle. In the next place, having elicited the fundamental 

 facts, it is needful to find for them some explanation 

 which, while connecting them harmoniously and lumin- 

 ously, shall be in strict accordance with the laws of 

 physics, and from the point of view of geological dyna- 

 mics may be regarded as not only possible but probable. 



Thus two obvious paths lead to the consideration of 

 the subject. By the one we are conducted into the region 

 of geological observation in the field. By the other we 

 are drawn to the laboratory and the workshop, where the 

 processes of nature can in some measure be repeated and 

 watched. But these two roadways lie near each other, 

 and the traveller along either of them, if he would keep 

 himself from profitless divergence, should never lose 

 sight of the other. Unfortunately this caution has not 

 always been followed. Hence theories of mountain 

 growth have been proposed, some of them wholly regard- 

 less of the real facts of mountain structure, others as 

 defiant of physical possibilities. 



Within the last few years the most detailed studies of 

 the actual structure of mountains yet attempted have been 

 carried out among the Alps. Chief among these are the 

 admirable monograph of Dr. Baltzer upon the Glarniseh, 

 and the still more remarkable and beautifully illustrated 

 work of Prof. Heim, on the mechanism of mountain- 

 making. These two writers deserve the thanks of all who 

 take interest in the many questions which the forms of 

 the mountains never cease to raise in the mind. They 



■ •• Der Mechanismus der Gebirgsbildung." Dr. F. Pfiff. (Heidelberg, 

 1879) 



