Notes on the Animal Life of the Hothouses of the 
Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. 
BY 
ROBERT GODFREY. 
During the summer of 1903 Mr. James Waterston recog- 
nised an exotic ant running on one of the botanical specimens 
in the Botany class-room, and was in consequence prompted to 
begin in the following year a series of enquiries—in which he 
generously asked me to co-operate—into the natural history of 
the hothouses. Through the kindness of Professor Bayley 
Balfour we were allowed unrestrained access to the hothouses, and 
in the foreman of the Glass Department, Mr. Stewart, and his | 
subordinates we have found very willing allies. 
The animal life of the hothouses, both in its wealth and in its 
variety, surpassed all our expectations ; and, imported uninten- 
tionally as it has been from all quarters of the globe, it affords 
the most striking evidence possible of the part played by man 
in the distribution of species. Insects and shells from Central 
and Southern Europe are living here side by side with species 
from America and the West Indies. Under inverted flowerpots 
and in similar dark corners the Australian cockroach hides by 
day, and among the plants in the Orchid-house a large jumping- 
spider—identified by Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge as Hasarius 
adansont?, Sav.—lives and thrives, spending part of his time 
in stalking bluebottles and other insects and springing upon his 
prey from as great a distance as eighteen inches (a spring of 
this extent having been carefully measured by Mr. Stewart). 
In the mould of the propagating-frames a millipede, strange to 
the eyes of Scottish naturalists, and a large planarian worm 
have long been thoroughly acclimatised, and a pretty little 
isopod is established in the same retreats. Among the other 
(Notes, R.B.G,, Edin., No. XVII., April 1907.] 
