SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Temperatures several degrees below zero were 

 registered in many parts of England. 



1879, November 14th to December 27th, forty-four 

 days, mean temperature 31° F., minimum 137 . 



1881, January 7th to 26th, twenty days, mean 

 temperature 27 F., minimum 127-. It is re- 

 markable that this mean is the same as for the 

 present year's frost as calculated up to February 

 15th. Minus 4 F., was recorded at Wick, and 

 minus 7.5 F. at St. Michael's-on-Wyre, Garstang. 

 Lancashire. At the close of this frost a severe 

 easterly gale and an exceptionally heavy fall ot 

 snow occurred over the south of England. 



1890-1, November 25th to January 22nd, fifty-nine 

 days, mean temperature 39.3', minimum 12" F- 

 This frost was not only the longest of the present 

 century but was also very severe in England, in 

 many parts of which the thermometer reached 

 zero. In Ireland and Scotland, however, the 

 weather was much milder. 



It has been observed that the spring and summer 

 months succeeding these prolonged frosts have 

 generally been fairly dry, though not perhaps 

 exceptionally warm. Hitherto no periodicity has 

 been remarked in the recurrence of prolonged 

 frosts, nor has any satisfactory explanation been 

 suggested to account for their visitation. 



Though many deaths have been traced to the 

 recent severity of the weather, yet the death-rate 

 has been considerably lower than in the frost of 

 1891, when in London it ran up to 297, or in that of 

 1880, when it reached 46-7. During the first week 

 of the present frost the Registrar General's returns 

 gave 176, the second week 19, and the third 21. 

 The unusual amount of sunshine and the absence of 

 damps, have probably contributed largely to this 

 satisfactory result. Many hundreds of our song- 

 birds have, however, succumbed to the effects of the 

 frost ; numbers of sea-gulls have taken refuge inland, 

 some arctic birds have been observed in Lincoln- 

 shire, a seal was seen on the ice in Morecambe 

 Bay, and about a hundred little auks were picked 

 up on the shore at Filey in a very exhausted 

 condition. 



On the Continent the plains of Piedmont have 

 been invaded by hordes of wolves, which have killed 

 many of the villagers, whilst at Tenda the Alpine 

 troops have been told off to wage war against these 

 ravenous beasts. 



In the London parks the ice has been unusually 

 thick, on February 15th measuring at Finsbury 

 Park nearly eleven inches, and on the Serpentine 

 about six inches, at a later date it exceeded nine 

 inches, that thickness having been only once 

 previously attained since 1881. The strength of the 

 jce on the Serpentine was effectively demonstrated 

 on February 13th, when 600 Grenadier Guardsmen 

 marched across it with their band. 

 February 21st, 1895. 



NOTES OF A HOME NATURALIST. 



T X the second week in December, 1S94, I took a 

 glass jam-jar, some eight inches high, and 

 dipped it nearly full of water from an old fish-stew at 

 Shiplake Court, close to where I live. This fish- 

 stew is always a favourite preserve for me, as a dip 

 invariably brings up life in some form to be found 

 in its stagnant waters. With a small hand-net I 

 dipped for a weed or so, the result was I picked up 

 some apparently dead pieces of Cevatophyllum 

 dcmersum (or horn-weed). These pieces were like 

 brown oval lumps, devoid of all apparent life, a few 

 pieces of Lemnia polyrhiza, or greater duckweed, 

 and Lemnia trisulca, or ivy-leafed duckweed, two tiny 

 water snails (Lymnea peregva), one gyrinating water- 

 beetle, one water-louse (Asellus aquaticus), and a pale- 

 coloured nematode, and a leech. The bottle con- 

 tained also Daphnia shafferri (tailed water-fleas), and 

 Cyclops quadricornis, in the water dipped. At first I 

 kept the bottle in a room without a fire; now, for 

 three weeks, in my drawing-room, in which is a daily 

 fire. It has been an endless amusement in dull 

 days to look at ; at the moment I am writing this, 

 February 3rd, 1895, the horn-weed, far from being 

 brown, has shot out into the most vivid green 

 lovely plants, the largest oval brown " lump " is over 

 five inches long, the smaller ones all in lovely foliage. 

 Probably from the folds of the w eed, there have been 

 born, since I fished, at least three nematodes — one 

 with a sort of barley-sugar-coloured jointed body 

 and a round excrescence at head — two pale white 

 leeches or nematodes (I do not know which to name 

 them), three cadises — two of Phryganea grandis in 

 their curious leaf-cases, one of Limnophilus rhombicus 

 — which grow daily. They are most diligent in 

 adorning their cases with weed, etc. The water- 

 fleas {Daphnia and Cyclops, or vaulters), are im- 

 mensely grown, and seem to have produced and 

 multiplied, considering the animated specks I see 

 flying every way. The Cyclops, with their curious 

 hanging egg-bags, are very funny. Sometimes the 

 egg-sacs are both colourless, then full and dark, 

 then one will be shed and the other still be 

 dark, and then again both will be void, or entirely 

 disappeared. Fond as I am of aquaria, I never 

 have kept them in winter. As I leave home every 

 summer for some time, I empty the contents of 

 my bottles back into their own habitats before 

 leaving. If I could only persuade others to take a 

 glass jam-bottle and fill it in a similar way I think 

 they might find endless amusement and diversion 

 for a dull five minutes in this hard, cold winter, 

 when the home naturalist almost despairs of find- 

 ing material for study. My bottle is become a 

 " thing of beauty," and an endless amusement in 

 watching its different inhabitants. 



(Mrs.) Emily J. Climexson. 

 Shiplake Vicarage, Oxon. 



