June 1, 1865.] 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



127 



dustrious little workmen never rested until their 

 labour was completed. As they grew bigger and 

 needed more accommodation, they enlarged the 

 boundaries of their silken fabric, and sometimes this 

 was almost a daily work. When the weather was 

 very hot, they must have found the inside of the 

 nest uncomfortably warm, for many of them would 

 come out and lie on the outside to sleep, packed in 

 a group together as tightly as they could lie. Then 

 these would go in after they had enjoyed sleeping 

 out for a time, and another party would come out in 

 the same way. When the Caterpillars were fully 

 grown, they were about two inches in length. There 

 were a few of them, about half a dozen, who were 

 much fatter and bigger than the rest, quite a kind of 

 aldermen in their way. Down each side of the body 

 were a row of small squares filled with a tuft of 

 light-brown hair, the lines forming the squares being 

 bright yellow. Down the middle of the back, be- 

 tween these rows on either side, was a rich purple 

 stripe. Their legs were red. When they were fuUy 

 grown, they showed signs of wishing to build their 

 cocoons and pass into their " dead-alive " state. At 

 this time they evidently wished to separate ; for 

 whenever the bos was opened, they rushed out on 

 all sides with tenfold more eagerness than they had 

 ever done before. My sister kept them together, 

 however, as the box was amply large enough for 

 them to pass their changes in, and she wished to 

 trace them through the whole. They made for them- 

 selves small oval smooth cocoons of rather a hard 

 nature, brown in colour, some rather darker than 

 others. Each had one, and some two, tiny little 

 holes in the side, just like a minute needle-prick ; I 

 conclude they were to afford air to the mysterious 

 being within. If this was their purpose, they would 

 show that respiration is carried on by the chrysalis 

 and set at rest one point respecting the life of the 

 insect during this period of entombment. On the 

 17th July, they began to change. In the following 

 spring (1858) the moths emerged from their living 

 tombs into the glories of the sunlit-world. On March 

 20th, the first appeared, and the others, upwards of 

 400 in number, followed closely after. They had 

 beautifully contrived a little door in one end of the 

 cocoon with a hinge of the most perfect workmanship 

 which opened outwards, and, therefore, on being 

 pushed from within, made an outlet for the little 

 prisoner. By about the end of April, the short lives 

 of these little creatures were all ended, the one life 

 of each was gone for ever, their "narrow span." 

 What "blessed toil" filled up each hour of that tiny 

 life we understand not fully, but they did their work 

 and did it bravely, each in that little home, the 

 buUder and the soldier and the careful watcher, and 

 many another that was hidden from our view. They 

 worked out their little destiny, and that is the task 

 which is allotted to each of us. Y. Y. 



A PUZZLE WORTH THINKING ABOUT. 



TN the course of a recent re-esamination of some 

 -^ of the Barbados-deposit slides, I came upon 

 an object not referable to any of the infusorial 

 forms I had ever seen ; and on sending it to a friend 

 in Edinburgh of the highest microscopical authority, 

 the answer received was, " It is undoubtedly the 

 scale of some Lepidopterous insect, possibly oil the 

 wing of some antediluvian butterly." How did it 

 get among the Polycystins ? The first thing was to 

 ascertain from the careful, experienced, and most 

 skilful preparer of the slides, whether he had about 

 him any other material at the time he was manipulat- 

 ing the Barbados earth, from which this scale could 

 have been accidentally brought into the preparation. 

 No ; the replies to these inquuies quite confirmed 

 the notion that the scale in question was an integral 

 part of the Barbados deposit. On further exami- 

 nation it appeared to be partially silidfied, which, 

 in fact, it must have been, not to be destroyed by 

 the repeated boilings and washings in strong acids 

 and alkalis to which the material had been sub- 

 jected. 



Sir Henry de la Beche says ("Geological Ob- 

 server," p. 631), ui countries, and especially in 

 tropical islands, such as the West Indies, where the 

 off-shore or land v/inds are at times somewhat strong, 

 multitudes of insects are often borne out to sea, 

 where, though the greater proportion may become 

 the food of marine creatures, some fall in situatious 

 to be entombed amid mud, silt, or 

 sand. In deposits chiefly formed of ^ /\ ^ 

 organic remains, the probable chemi- 

 cal composition of objects intro- 

 duced amid the accumulations in 

 which they are found should not be 

 neglected. Whole layers may be 

 formed of the harder parts of infu- 

 soria ; so that when these are sili- 

 ceous, they, and the spiculse of many 

 sponges, may serve to diffuse no small 

 amount of silica amid deposits of a 

 different character. Has, then, our 

 little scale been brushed from Ihc 

 wing of some ancient seaward-wafted 

 butterfly, and thus preserved amid 

 the siliceous organic silt of that former 

 sea-bottom, now raised and forming 

 a stratum of dry earth under the 

 hard coral-rock of the Peak of Tene- 

 riffe ? It is a beautiful object imder 

 a high magnifying power; its scol- 

 loped end is transparent for a little 

 way down, and then the ear appears a roughened 

 and slightly opaque surface, while down each side is 

 a richly-ornamented border, or binding; and the 

 stalk or peduncle by which it was attached to the 



