AND OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 



95 



taty processes. The cceca liave a similar structure, and are internally villous, but 

 are also marked internally -n-ith about seven longitudinal, prominent, white bands. 

 This description, brief and superficial as it is, will afford a more precise idea than a 

 laboured account to the tyro, to whom alone it is addressed, and who, with this be- 

 ginning, may easily perfect his knowledge by examining the organs of such birds as 

 he can readily procure. 



The physiology of the matter, also brieSy sketched, is this : — The Red Grouse feeds 

 on the tops of heath, Calluna vulgaris^ and Erica cinerea, the leaves and twigs of 

 Vaccinium Myrtillus, and Empetrum nigrum, with young heads of cotton-grass, 

 shoots of GuUum saxatile, carices, grasses, willows, and other plants, as well as ber- 

 ries. While feeding, it walks among the heath, selecting the fresh tips of the twigs, 

 which it breaks off nearly of a size, the largest pieces not exceeding half-an-inch in 

 length. Along with these substances it occasionally picks up a small fragment of 

 white quartz. Before it ceases it has filled the oesophagus and crop — the latter hold- 

 ing a very considerable quantity, as its diameter is nearly three inches. It then re- 

 poses among the heath. The crude food is propelled downwards by the successive 

 contraction of the muscular fibres of the cesophagus, until the stomach is filled, when the 

 lateral muscles of that organ, i, j, alternately contract and relax, and thus agitate the 

 mass of food, pressing it against the horny rugai of the inner coat, and causing the nu- 

 merous particles of quartz, a substance harder than glass, to cut or lacerate the fibres, 

 which have been moistened with the copious clammy fluid of the proventriculus, g. 

 The crop, d, e, it must be understood, is merely a recipient, and is destitute of mucous 

 glandules excepting near its mouth; nor do its fluids, which are scanty, exert any sol- 

 vent power upon the food. But the fluid of the proventriculus, g, operates both as a 

 solvent and a diluent. The mass contained in the stomach, being reduced to a coarse 

 pulp, is forced, by the general contraction of the muscles, into the intestines, through 

 the pyloric opening at l. In the upper part, or duodenal foldof the intestine, 7, m, Tiy 

 it is further diluted by the pancreatic fluid, and mixed with the bile ; and as it gra- 

 dually passes along the intestine, its nutritious parts are separated, adhere to the 

 surface, and are taken up by the absorbents to be cai-ried into the mass of the blood. 

 As it advances, the woody fibres and fragments of leaves become more perceptible; 

 and as the mass passes the mouth of the cceca, the finer particles are taken up by 

 them, until their entire cavity is filled with a brownish pulpy fluid, which seems to 

 undergo there a second elaboration, and to be absorbed, the residue being returned 

 into the intestine, where it accumulates in the rectum, and is voided in concrete cy- 

 lindrical fragments. 



All the Gallinaceous Birds have a crop, a powerful gizzard, and ca?ca of which 

 the capacity is about equal to that of the intestine ; but these ccecal appendages vary 

 greatly in form and length, being cylindrical in Grouse and Ptarmigans, and oblong 

 towards the end in Pheasants and other species. In the Pigeons there is also a 

 large crop, and a strong gizzard ; but the co^ca are merely rudimentary, seldom ex- 

 ceeding a third of an inch in length, with a diameter of about two lines. In many 

 Birds the cesophagus has no dilatation or crop, and the stomach exhibits all the gra- 

 dations, from the powerfully muscular kind or gizzard of the Gallinaceous Birds and 

 Pigeons, to the fibro-membraneous sac of Owls and Hawks. In Birds that feed on 

 fish, the oesophagus is extremely dilated, and the stomach reduced to small size; — in 

 short, the variations exhibited are at least as great in this class as in any other, and 

 the organs in question none but those who are unacquainted with them can possibly 

 consider as of less importance to the scientific Ornithologist than the feathers, or 

 other appendages of the dermal system. If the intestinal canal of any bird be laid 

 before a person who has examined that series of organs, he can instantly determine 

 the group or family of the species to ivhich it belonged. 



The Brekt Goose. — Having recently had occasion to examine the Cromarty 

 Frith, one of the estuaries of the north-eastern coast of Scotland, we were delighted 

 to find upon it vast flocks of Brent Geese, Anser Bei'iiicla. These birds arrive there 

 in the beginning of winter, and remain until the end of spring, keeping generally in 

 the expanded part of the firth, between Invergordon and Cromarty Ferry. On the 

 northern side of that portion of the estuary are very extensive flats of sand and mud, 

 which are exposed when the tide recedes, and then present in many places the ap- 

 pearance of large meadows, being covered with Sea Grass, Zostera marina, of 

 which the long, creeping, cylindrical, saccharine roots afford them an abundant supply 

 of food. We have seen probably ten thousand of these Geese on the shoals, together 

 with nearly an equal number of Gulls of various species, but chiefly Lartis canus, and 

 Larus ridihuiidtis. The Brent Geese also frequent the Beauly Frith, but in much 

 smaller numbers. The best account of this species is that by I\Ir Selby, in his Illus- 

 trations of British Ornithology, in which it is mentioned that the gizzard is fre- 

 quently found '* filled with the leaves and stems of a species of grass that grows 

 abundantly in the shallow pools left by the tide," and which may possibly be the 

 Zostera. Mr Selby states that they leave the ^'orthumbrian coast between the end 

 of February and that of March. According to the reports of the " natives," they 

 remain much later in Cromarty Bay ; and, on the 22d March, when we saw them there, 

 the flocks had not begun to break up. 



Maternal Solicitude of the Partridge — In the county of Linlithgow, for 

 three years past, the Partridges have been rapidly disappearing. During the month 

 of July in these years, there were several successive days of uncommonly wet weather, 

 in which a vast number of the young lost their Uves. Their attachment to their 

 brood is truly astonishing. I have known them, day after day, sitting on their youn"-, 

 until, on account of the lain, they all died; but I never heard or saw such strikino- 

 mstances of their care and tenderness as those which took place last season. I knew 

 of two broods in my neighbourhood, in protecting which both father and mother 

 sacrificed their lives. The one consisted of twelve birds. The male and the female 

 were found sitting close together, with their wings spread out, and six chickens under 

 each. The other consisted of ten birds. The male and the female were found in 

 the same situation, with five birds under each, and all of them dead. So anxious had 

 they been to protect their tender off'spring from the rain, that they starved themselves 

 to death, rather than suffer them to run any risk. Mr JlcUis, gamekeeper to Sir 

 William Bailhe of Polkemmet, told me that he knew several instances of the same 



kind last season, an occurrence which he never before had observed. How beauti- 

 fully does it illustrate our Saviour's lamentation over Jerusalem, once the holy and 

 beloved city of God, and the joy of the whole earth, but so soon, alas ! to be devoted 

 to irretrievable destruction! — Boghead, 21st March 1837.' — T. D. Weir. 



BOTANY. 



Pine Forests of ScOTLAyn. — The aboriginal woods of Britain have been so 

 much destroyed in consequence of the increase of population, that few remains of 

 them are now to be found beyond the hmits of the Highlands of Scotland, and even 

 there it is only in some of the more remote valleys that continuous tracts of sylvan ' 

 vegetation are met with. The species which are most abundant in those remains ol 

 our ancient woods are the Oak, the Birch, and the Pine. Oak-woods, however, are 

 generally reduced to the state of copses, which are periodically cut down for their 

 bark, and for hoops and other articles of domestic and rural economy. Birch forests 

 are still to be seen in many places, especially the glens of the Grampians, and the 

 mountains of the northern division, and as they ai*e not so useful as those of oak 

 and pine, they have a chance of remaining for a much longer period. The pine 

 forests are almost entirely confined to the valleys of the Dee and the Spey, where, 

 however, they have of late years suffered extensively from the axe. In Braemar, 

 trees having a girth of from ten to twelve feet are not uncommon, but most of the 

 larger trunks near the Dee have been cut down, and floated to Aberdeen. In 

 Badenoch and Strathspey, the long ranges of native pine, sombre as they may 

 be in the eyes of the Lowlandor or Englishman, afi'ord a delightful feeling to the 

 lover of wild nature, and to the Celt revisiting his native home, after years of ab- 

 sence in a foreign land, must impart a joy more intense than that experienced on 

 contemplating the palm groves of the most sunny cHmes. In those woods once 

 roamed the wolf and the wild ox, while the stately stag betook itself to the grassy 

 valleys, and the graceful roe browsed among the thickets of alder and willow that 

 skirted the streams. The wild pine of the Highlands has a very different appear- 

 ance from the trimmed and formal trees of the plantations ; its trunk is thicker, 

 shorter, and less rugged ; its branches more spreading and covered with a redder 

 bark undisfigured by lichens, and its wood is more resinous and of a redder tint. 



On the Wake and Sleep of Plants, by I\I. Dutrochet. — There are flower3 

 that have only a single wake, which is their expansion, and a single sleep, which im- 

 mediately precedes the death of the corolla. Of this kind are the flowers of Mirabilis 

 and Convolvulus. Other flowers present alternations of sleep and waking for several 

 days, such as that of the Dandelion, Lconiodon Taraxacum, 



The flower of Mirabilis Jalapa and M. loiigijlora opens its funnel-shaped corolla 

 in the evening, and closes it in the following morning. This flower may be 

 considered as formed by the union of five petals, each of which has its middle nerve. 

 The five nerves which sustain the membraneous tissue of the corolla, in the same 

 manner as the whalebone slips support the cloth of an umbrella, are the sole agents 

 of the movements by which are produced the opening of the corolla, or its state of 

 waking, and its closing or sleep. In the former case, the five nerves curve so as to 

 direct their concavity outwards ; in the latter, they bend so as to direct their con- 

 cavity towards the interior of the flov:er, and they thus carry with them the mem- 

 braneous tissue of the corolla as far as the orifice of its tubular canal. 



Thus the same nerves, at two different periods, successively perform two opposite 

 motions of incurvation. I have observed, with the microscope, the internal organiza- 

 tion of these nerves. They present, at their outer side, a cellular tissue, of which 

 the cells, disposed in longitudinal series, chiefly diminish in size from the inner to- 

 wards the outer side, so that, during the turgescence of these cells, the tissue which 

 they form must curve in such a manner as to direct its concavity outwards. It is by 

 it, therefore, that the expansion of the corolla, or what is namec its wake, must be 

 operated. On the inner side of each nerve there is a fibrous tissue, composed of 

 transparent fibres extremely slender, and intermingled with globules arranged in 

 longitudinal series. This fibrous tissue is situate between a layer of tracheae or spiral 

 vessels on the one hand, and a layer of superficial cellules filled with air on the other ; 

 so that it is placed between two laminae of pneumatic organs. 



On separating, by a longitudinal section, the cellular tissue and the fibrous tissue, 

 of which the nerve is composed, and then immersing it in water, I found that the 

 cellular tissue curved outwards, while the fibrous tissue curved towards the interior 

 of the corolla. These two inverse curvings invariably took place. Thus it is with- 

 out any doubt the cellular tipsue of each nerve that, by its incurvation, produces the 

 wake or opening of the corolla, and the fibrous tissue that, by its incurvation in the 

 opposite direction, eflfects its sleep or closing. 



I separated a nerve from a corolla of Jlirabilis which was yet in bud, but near the 

 period of expansion, and on immersing it in water, observed that it curved strongly 

 outwards, thus instantly taking the curve which produces the expansion or wake of 

 the corolla. I then removed it into syrup, when it curved in the opposite direction, 

 or inwards. This proves that, in the second case, there was turgescence of the cel- 

 lules, the external water then, from the efTect of endosmosis, directing itself towards 

 the organic hquid that existed in these cellules; and that, in the second case, there 

 was depletion of the cellules, because their organic liquid, being less dense than the 

 external syrup, then directed itself towards it. It might be thought from this ex- 

 periment, that the spreading or wake of the corolla being owing to the turgescence 

 of the cellular tissue of its nerves, its shutting or sleep must be owing to the deple- 

 tion of the same tissue; but it is proved by experiment, that this is not the cause of 

 the shutting or sleep of the corolla. I separated a nerve from a corolla near the 

 period of opening^ and immersed it in water. This nerve, which was curved s]i"htlv 

 inwards, as is the case in the corolla, when in bud, curved strongly outwards, or in 

 the direction which produces expansion or the state nf waking. Endosmosis then 

 determined the turgescence of the cellular tissue, which is the organ of this incurva- 

 tion. When it had been immersed about six hours, the nerve gave up its outward 

 bend, began to curve inwards, and was soon entirely rolled up. 



This succession of phenomena is entirely independent upon the action of light. 

 Thus, the nerve of a corolla of Mirabilis assumes in water the curve which effects 



