Jan. 20, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



61 



record, and though he regretted to say that she was not 

 so active as formerly, and was now a little stiff in the 

 joints, still, as far as he was able to observe, she was 

 in perfect health, and he had every hope that he would 

 continue to enjoy the pleasure of her society for some 

 time. He had tried experiments to see if ants were 

 capable of mutual recognition. He kept ants of the same 

 nest apart for a year and a half, and on putting them 

 together again he found that there was mutual recog- 

 nition. He was afraid a great many men forgot their 

 friends in a much less time. Desirous to know by what 

 signal, password, or other means ants made their 

 recognition, he reduced one set to insensibility. Chloro- 

 form not answering the purpose, he determined to make 

 them drunk. He found that the only way to make an 

 ant drunk was, not by enticing her to take poisonous 

 spirit, but by putting her into the whisky. He then 

 made the sober ants approach the drunken ants. At 

 first the former did not seem to know how to deal with 

 the latter. At last one of the sober ants took up one of 

 the drunkards belonging to a different nest, looked at it, 

 walked slowly to the end of the table, and dropped her 

 into some water that was there. The stranger ants were 

 all taken and thrown into the water, while the ants 

 belonging to the same nest were carried back, where he 

 had no doubt they soon recovered from the effects of the 

 drink. This experiment proved that ants did not 

 recognise one another by any password, but it also 

 proved that their faculty of recognition was unerring. 

 The lecturer proceeded to sketch the senses and moral 

 qualities of ants, and gave numerous illustrations of 

 their affection among themselves, their hostility towards 

 ants belonging to other nests, and their powers of 

 intercommunication. 



Christmas Island. — Mr. J. J. Lister, who visited this 

 island in H.M.S. Egcria, sends to Nature the following 

 account of the flora and fauna of this island. It is 

 entirely covered with trees, many of them reaching 

 to 150 ft. to 170 ft. or more, and some of them have 

 vertical buttresses at the base. They are often laden 

 with great clumps of ferns, orchids, and parasitical trees, 

 and are often festooned with long lianas. Along the 

 shores grow thickets of screw-pines. Many of the trees 

 bear edible fruits. There are swarms of rats {Mus 

 maclcari), and another species not determined, a shrew, 

 a fruit-eating bat {Ptcropus natalis), and a small insect- 

 eating bat. A large pigeon {Carpophaga whartoni), and 

 a small dove, which, from its colour, can scarcely be seen 

 on the ground among fallen brown and green leaves. A 

 thrush i^Titnius erythropleitrus) and a Zosterops are 

 common. The author obtained, further, two hawks, an 

 owl, a swift, a heron, a plover, and a sandpiper, three 

 kinds of lizards, five kinds of land shells, four of butter- 

 flies, a few moths, eighteen species of beetles, besides 

 spiders and centipedes. He is sending home fifty kinds 

 of flowering plants and fifteen ferns. The highest point 

 of the island is 1,200 feet above the sea-level, and it is 

 coral-clad to the very top. 



The Hessian Fly and its Parasites. — In an appendix 

 to Miss Ormerod's pamphlet on the Hessian fly is given, 

 perhaps, the most curious and interesting bit of information 

 we have as yet had with regard to the Hessian fly. It 

 will be recollected that in the summer Professor Fream 

 made the welcome announcement that with the fly had 

 come one of its most deadl}' parasites. Miss Ormerod 



has hatched out a number of these parasites, and these 

 have been identified by Professor C. V. Riley and Dr. 

 Lindeman. It thus appears that seven distinct parasites 

 have been already identified, and curiouslj' enough they 

 are not only all Russian, but embrace all the parasites 

 known to Dr. Lindeman. The names of these are as 

 follow : — I, Platygaster mimihis ; 2, Scmiotellus nigripcs; 

 3, Eiipeliiius karschii ; 4, Merisiis intermedins (a very 

 valuable species) ; 5, Tetrastichiis Rileyi ; 6, Euryscapns 

 saltator — all species of Lind : and 7, Daciiusa senilis, Hald. 

 It is very interesting to have this confirmation as to the 

 suspected Russian origin ofthe pest, just as it is comforting 

 to know that the Hessian fly has brought all his known 

 enemies with him into the country. 



Edible Birds' Nests. — Mr. J. R. Green, of the Cam- 

 bridge Physiological Laboratorj', has examined a number 

 of these nests, and finds them to consist of gelatine or 

 mucine. There was nothing to connect the matter with 

 cellulose, and the algae adherent are probably accidental. 



Ven.^tion of the Wings of Insects. — Mr. Waterhouse 

 of the British Museum, has communicated to the Ento- 

 mological Society an important memoir on the " Homo- 

 logies in the Venation ofthe Wings of Insects." 



Death of Birds along Telegraph Wires. — Mr. R. D. 

 Smillie, writing to the Electrical Review, speaks of numbers 

 of birds found dead along telegraph wires. He doubts 

 whether they have been killed by coming in violent con- 

 tact with the wires, as in many cases no bones are broken 

 and the plumage is unruffled. He has seen several small 

 birds perch on and fall from a 19' 12 bore cable carrying 

 a 20-ampere current charging accumulators. He points 

 out that the birds could not short-circuit the cables with 

 their feet, as they are nine inches apart, and asks if the 

 difference of potential in the short length of cable between 

 the birds' feet, perhaps an inch, could cause their death ? 



■^^»^*^5«f^ 



WILL-O'-THE-WISP.— m. 



( Concliidid from /■ 38) 



A NOTHER hypothesis, advanced by certain very 

 ■^"^ learned authors, such as Ray, Willoughby, Kirby, 

 and Spence, ascribes the Wisp to luminous insects. 

 Drs. Dereham and Phipson combat this view on the 

 ground that such insects " rise far higher in the air than 

 does the Wisp, and present the appearance of hundreds 

 of little specks of light." This argument seems doubt- 

 fully valid. Luminous insects are, in all probability, 

 more numerous than it is ordinarily suspected, and 

 they vary considerably' in their habits. The apparent 

 size of the light may be considered a fatal obstacle, since 

 no known English insect emits a light of the size of " two 

 fists." But a mysterious light seen in the dark by a 

 superstitious and terrified ploughboy will very naturally 

 be described — and that without any intentional or con- 

 scious exaggeration — as much larger than it really was. 

 The circumstances that the Wisp is chiefly seen in calm 

 weather and during the summer season are in favour of 

 this supposition. But we have some positive testimony 

 to advance. The Rev. Dr. Sutton, of Norwich, informed 

 Dr. Kirby that when he was curate of Ickleton, in Cam- 

 bridgeshire, in 1780, a farmer of that place, of the name 

 of Simpringham, brought him a mole-cricket {Gryllotalpa 

 vulgaris), and told him that one of his people, seeing a 

 Jack-o'-Lantern, struck at it and knocked it down, wnen 



