June IS, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



565 



interferes with the ear. The same insect is also in- 

 jurious to hops, hemp, and millet. 



Insects as Human Food. — According to Mr. A. S. 

 OUiff, F.E.S., of the Australian Museum, Sydney 

 {Entomologist), the larvae of various moths, such as 

 Zelotypia, Hepialus, Charagia, Pieliis, as well as those of 

 certain Coleoptera, especially long-horns and weesils, are 

 eaten not merely by the aboriginal blacks, but by some 

 of the British settlers. 



Culture of Trout in Ponds. — M. Zipoy (Journal 

 d Agriculture and Cosmos) shows that lake trout may be 

 successfully bred in ponds. The water must be fairly 

 cool, and of course unpolluted, and it should be con- 

 stantly renewed by a considerable inflow and outflow. 

 The bottom should be sandy. Animal food, such as that 

 recommended in Scientific News, p. 468, will be found 

 the most suitable. 



BiRD-DoiNGs of the Season. — Mr. H. Kerr {Newcastle 

 Weekly Chronicle) mentions two interesting facts. The first 

 is the increasing prevalence of the swift in and near Man- 

 chester, a region which would seem to have few attrac- 

 tions for birds, and where the species has hitherto been 

 far from numerous. The second is the convictive 

 evidence found as regards the egg-eating propensities of 

 the rook. Near Kelso more than half the nests of the 

 small birds have been robbed by these greedy pilferers. 

 We may ask whether the lateness of the season has 

 driven the rooks to make an extraordinary use of this food. 



Importation of Birds into Oregon.— We learn that 

 700 European singing birds are to be imported into 

 Oregon by a society of German colonists, who deplore 

 the absence of songsters in the Great West. Skylarks, 

 bullfinches, nightingales, chaffinches, goldfinches, linnets, 

 greenfinches, thrushes, and starlings will form the cargo, 

 and will be let loose in the country immediately on 

 arrival. We trust, however, that these birds will not 

 ultimately prove so great a nuisance as the rabbit and 

 the thistle have in Australia. 



AN Anti-Evolutionist Argument. — " Show me," says 

 M, Blanchard, in his recent work, " La Vie des Etres 

 Animes," " a single instance of the transformation of a 

 species ! " " Show us," we reply, " a single animal or 

 plant produced in any other way than from a pre-exist- 

 ing animal or plant ! " 



The Hooded Crow. — According to correspondents of 

 the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle the hooded or Royston 

 crow {Corvits cornix) and the ordinary carrion crow 

 {Corviis corone) breed together in England and Scotland. 

 Being, however, very much less plentiful in Britain than 

 in Siberia, such cases are less frequently observed here 

 than in the latter country. 



The West Indian Fire-Fly. — A specimen of this 

 beetle {Pyrophorus noctilucus) has been brought over in 

 full vigour by Dr. Brand, of Hanley Road. Two 

 organs at the base of the thorax emit a beautiful greenish 

 light, and two others, on the abdomen, an orange- 

 coloured light. The luminosity is evidently under the 

 control of the insect, and becomes more intense if it is 

 irritated. The light is strong enough to render the faces 

 of persons recognisable in a small darkened room. 



THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY. 



GEOGRAPHY as a school subject can never lose its 

 place. It is at once so interesting and so im- 

 portant that boy and man alike love to get it up. Only 

 the very worst teaching, pedantic and unreal, can spoil 

 so delightful a study. There are, it is true, text-books 

 of geography competent to this difficult feat, books in 

 which names and statistics are deliberately preferred to 

 facts and reasoning, but most of us are better treated, 

 and it is with more or less pleasure that we gather from 

 our books and teachers some new glimpses of the great 

 world and its inhabitants. 



The sound teacher is ever trying to get out of his 

 subject more drill tor the minds of his boys. Mere facts 

 may not give opportunity for this drill, but facts which 

 can readily be reduced to laws, do. Physical geography, 

 or physiography, for example does. This side of geo- 

 graphical teaching has been methodised by Professor 

 Huxley and others, and there is now no excuse for 

 teaching it by rote. Those who wish to find exercise 

 for the minds of smart and fairly well-trained schoolboys 

 will find it in Alfred Hughes' " Practical Geography for 

 Schools," recently issued bythe Clarendon Press,an admir- 

 able collection of exercises on the simpler laws which 

 can be deduced from such natural phenomena as the 

 seasons, day and night, and other semi-astronomical 

 data. Such work must never be taken too lightly, unless 

 we would have our young people grow up as " semi- 

 Solomons, half knowing everything from the cedar to the 

 hyssop." 



Where geography comes to deal with concrete facts, 

 reducible to no laws which the mind, at least of a school- 

 boy, can grasp, it becomes incapable of furnishing good 

 material for mental gymnastic. But the interest and 

 practical importance of the facts save them from the 

 possibility of being neglected. What are the natural 

 productions of different countries, what snowy mountains 

 and active volcanoes are like, what sort of people inhabit 

 the forests of Brazil, and the deserts of Africa, and the 

 frozen wastes of Greenland, the active-minded boy must 

 needs know. If you don't tell him at school he will 

 make what he can out of " Robinson Crusoe " and " King 

 Solomon's Mines." And the boy's father, trading per- 

 haps with distant countries himself, will by no means be 

 satisfied to have the lad grow up ignorant of India and 

 the Colonies, and what they produce. Whatever the 

 schoolmaster may think of commercial geography, he 

 must bring it in, and it will be wise to teach it carefully 

 and well. 



How capitally the Dutch do this ! A j'oung fellow 

 going out to Java, or a merchant trading with the East 

 Indies, can get to see for himself the productions, the 

 dress, the houses, and ten thousand other details of any 

 of the Dutch possessions, and all without leaving his own 

 town or city. Collections of every kind, photographs, 

 and printed matter, are accumulated at vast expense for 

 this express purpose. But the young Englishman going 

 out to India, the English merchant trading with Bombay 

 or Fiji, has no such facilities as his Dutch competitor. 

 He may collect photographs and books, and make a 

 museum for himself if he pleases. There is nothing 

 ready to his hand, except the Indian collections at South 

 Kensington. 



Our recent Colonial Exhibition was far from useless 

 in its way. Would that some part of it had been made 

 permanent ! Perhaps the new Technical Institute may 

 fill the gap to some extent. But England is too wide 



