204 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 246 



too much of heredity here ? No doubt its importance cannot be 

 exaggerated. But if, as the author admits, " the early appearance 

 of the sympathies depends upon an early development of mental 

 functions which are properly dormant until later in life," may not 

 the cruelty of children be an incident of ignorance, and not due to 

 the entire absence of pity? As admitted, pity is a state of mind 

 which belongs to the reflective stage of consciousness, when we are 

 able to compare ourselves with others, and, in however indistinct a 

 form, to apply the method of doing as we would be done by. It is 

 quite possible that children know nothing about the pain they 

 inflict by cruelty and torture. They may be governed in 

 their conduct by much the same curiosity that prevails to 

 permit vivisection, and most probably never inflict pain for the sake 

 of creating suffering. Blind Tom, when a boy, used to pinch and 

 torment his brothers and sisters until they cried, and all for the 

 sake of the pleasure he himself received from a new and peculiar 

 kind of sound, his mind being interested in all sounds alike, and 

 passing no intellectual or moral judgments upon their occuri'ence. It 

 is no doubt much the same with most children until their experience 

 enables them to realize a ' solidarity ' of interests between them- 

 selves and others. Then they will begin to show sympathy and to 

 shrink from producing pain, not because it is hereditary, but because 

 social environment exerts such a pressure in favor of learning t-he 

 consequences and moral significance of our actions. At the same 

 time heredity cannot be ignored. But the phenomena of cruelty 

 and'pity are much more complex than heredity, while including it. 

 Besides, it may be misleading to say that " the emotion of pity ap- 

 peared late in the history of the race ; " for it may not have been 

 so much the sympathies that appeared late as the extent of their 

 application. So of the individual. Pity may be instinctive, but the 

 complicated range of circumstances which require its exercise m ay 

 demand more knowledge and experience than are possible to child- 

 hood. Indeed, children may very early begin to cry from sympathy 

 at the spectacle of suffering in others, when conscious of it, but are 

 indifferent to its infliction upon animals, most probably because they 

 do not realize any thing about it. Pity will show itself, then, in pro- 

 portion to the extension of their knowledge of what is reciprocal to 

 their own interests or sense of pain. Hence may we not say of 

 sympathy, both in the race and in the individual, what T. H. Green 

 said of humanity in comparing Greek and modern civilization ; 

 namely, that the standard of conduct in this respect was the same 

 to the Greek as to us, but that more persons are to-day included in 

 the right to be judged by it ? That is, " the conviction of the 

 brotherhood of all men does not bring a new conception of what is 

 due towards those who have claims upon us, but a new view of the 

 range of persons who have such claims." Certainly it seems a 

 little violent to suppose the absence of sympathy altogether because 

 the extensive conditions under which it is exercised at present were 

 wanting in the earlier history of the race or of the individual. 



J. H. H. 



The Purslane-Worm (Copidryas Gloveri Grote). 



During the past season the entire State of Kansas has suffered 

 an invasion of caterpillars of a species not previously known to exist 

 except upon the plains of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and west- 

 ern Texas. This insect has occurred in such numbers as to suggest 

 to many of our citizens the idea of spontaneous generation, and the 

 writer has received many inquiries indicating alarm lest it should 

 prove to be a new edition of the real ' army-worm,' and become a 

 great crop-destroyer in the year 1888. Such fears, however, are 

 entirely groundless. I have not been able to make the caterpillars 

 eat any thing but purslane ; and the insect may be regarded as a 

 friend rather than a foe, since its chief mission in life appears to be 

 the destruction of one of our most troublesome weeds. 



The eastward progress of this species reminds one of the similar 

 advance of the Colorado potato-beetle. My first acquaintance with 

 it was made in August, 1884, at Deming, New Mex., nearly twelve 

 hundred miles from Lawrence, where I captured some twenty of 

 the moths during my summer collecting-expedition. They were 

 attracted by the lamps at the station-hotel of the Atchison, 

 Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad Company. They proved to be a 

 rare species in collections, and were in great demand among my 

 entomological correspondents. My next acquaintance with this 



insect was from two specimens of the moth captured at the electric 

 lights in Emporia, Kan., by my student-friend and assistant, Mr. 

 V. L. Kellogg. Professor Popenoe of Manhattan observed the cat- 

 erpillars and bred the moth in 1886. Emporia and Manhattan are 

 each about a hundred miles west from Lawrence, and the first 

 observed appearance of the species at the latter place was in 1887. 

 It remains to be seen whether the purslane-destroyer will become 

 acclimated in a moister and colder climate than that of its original 

 habitat. If it succeeds in adapting itself to its new environment, it 

 may push on to the Atlantic seaboard, and delight the farmers and 

 gardeners of the whole country by assisting to exterminate the 

 hated ' pursley.' If not, it will disappear from view, as did a certain 

 New Mexico butterfly (Cc//a.r Mexzca>ia),^]\\c\\ appeared suddenly 

 in Kansas in large numbers in November, 1875, and has not since 

 been observed in the State, having been unable to survive the first 

 winter. Inasmuch as this latter immigrant has already survived 

 one Kansas winter in safety, it is probable that it will become a 

 permanent resident. 



I would offer the following explanation of the fact that this insect, 

 indigenous to the Far-Western plains, should so long have delayed 

 its invasion of Kansas and its possible ' march to the sea.' Its 

 native food-plant being a Western species of purslane {jPortidaca 

 retusa Engelmann), it did not extend beyond its original habitat 

 until the building of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad 

 had resulted in the western extension of our common Eastern purs- 

 lane {P. oleracea L.). As soon as the Eastern purslane reached 

 the home of the Far- Western species, forming a sufficiently contin- 

 uous connection, the purslane caterpillar, finding the two plants 

 equally palatable, began its eastward march. In precisely the same 

 way the Colorado potato-beetle, having for its original food-plant a 

 wild Western species of Solatiuin (5. rosira^um),hega.n its journey 

 to the Atlantic just as soon as the cultivated potato (Solanum 

 tuberosum) was extended westward to meet the wild Solanum, 

 commonly called the Texas thistle and Santa Fe burr. 



To the entomologist it will be interesting to know that the scien- 

 tific name of the purslane moth is Copidryas Gloveri. It was 

 described by A. R. Grote in 1868 as belonging to the genus Eus- 

 cirrhopterus, but at a later date it was placed by him in the new 

 genus Copidryas. Mr. Herman Strecker has referred it to the 

 genus Eudryas, but the peculiarities of the caterpillar, hitherto un- 

 known, confirm the propriety of separating it from that genus. It 

 belongs to the family Zygcenidce, and is a near relative of the ' beau- 

 tiful wood-nymph ' {Eudryas grata) and the ' eight-spotted for- 

 ester ' {Alypia octojnaculata) . As both the latter species feed upon 

 the foliage of the grape-vine, it would not surprise me to find the 

 purslane-worm occasionally making use of the same food-plant. I 

 do not, however, apprehend any serious danger of making such a 

 discovery. F. H. Snow. 



University of Kansas, 

 Lawrence, Kan., Oct. lo. 



Queries. 



15. Is THE Trumpet-Creeper Poisonous? — I should be very 

 glad to hear of any positive evidence in regard to the alleged poi- 

 sonous property of the trumpet-creeper ( TVcoot^z radicans). This 

 beautiful vine is very abundant in this neighborhood, and there 

 seems to be a pretty general belief that it is poisonous to the touch, 

 the effect being like that of the poisonous Rhus. I have not, how- 

 ever, been able to get hold of any well-authenticated cases of poi- 

 soning from this plant. A child of my acquaintance was said to 

 have been poisoned from handling it, but it is not at all certain that 

 the eruption was not a return of a slight cutaneous affection from 

 which the child had suffered shortly before. Such cases as this 

 prove nothing, nor, on the other hand, does the fact that I, and 

 others, have handled the plant with impunity. Our immunity 

 may have been due to our individual constitutions. Every one 

 knows, of course, that there are plenty of people who are not at all 

 susceptible to i?//?ci'-poisoning, and yet no one would hesitate to 

 call either species of Rhus a very poisonous plant. As far as I can 

 learn, the poisonous property of the trumpet-creeper is not gener- 

 ally recognized by botanists. I shall be very glad to hear what the 

 experience of other people has been with this plant. 



John Murdoch. 



Smithsonian Institution, Oct. 12. 



