HARD JFICA'E'S SCIENCE- G OSSIF. 



95 



A Marsh Garden. — In your May 1S91 Number 

 (No 317) you have an article entitled "A Marsh 

 Garden." As I am desirous of trying this, could any 

 reader kindly tell me where I could get a piece of 

 marsh as therein described, either to purchase or 

 exchange ? — C. Pcmbcrtcni. 



Flents ix Chalk, &c — As county Antrim is 

 probably the best county in Great Britain to study 

 such objects, many articles have been written on 

 them. The county is full of flints ; they are very 

 plentiful in our "Cretaceous Limestone," which is 

 exposed on fine cliffs along a coast-line of about 

 seventy or eighty miles, and in sectioos everywhere 

 through the county. During the British Association's 

 visit to Belfast in 1S74, a Society to which I belong 

 (the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club), and which has 

 always taken the greatest possible interest in the 

 Cretaceous Limestones of Antrim, and the banded 

 flints, sponge spicules and Foraminifera which are so 

 common in hollow flints in some districts, published 

 a complete Nat. Hist. Guide of some hundred pages, 

 for the use of members of the B.A. This is still the 

 standard guide, although only a very few copies are 

 now to be had from the Sees, of the club (Museum, 

 Belfast), and contains all information about the chalk 

 flints of Antrim. It was on the Cave Hill Lime- 

 stone Quarries at Belfast that the late Dean Buckland 

 saw those long-shaped peculiar flints, with hollow 

 tube running through them, that he called " Para- 

 moudras " and got so much laughed at for so calling, 

 on the word of a quarryman. I have many geo- 

 logical photos of county Antrim Basaltic rocks and 

 Cretaceous. The views I have of the Cave Hill 

 Quarries show the flints in regular stratified layers or 

 bands. If, however, any reader would like to have 

 a list of the best papers written on the subject, 

 address Mr. S. A. Stewart, F.L.S., Museum, Belfast ; 

 he will doubtless give a list. The B.N.F.C. Guide, 

 I may say, is now reduced to 2s. each. It was the 

 first thing ot its kind so elaborately done for a B.A. 

 visit to any city, and has formed the standard for 

 every guide published since 1874 for the B.A. visits 

 to other towns. Wm. Gray, Esq., C.E., M.R.I.A., 

 oneof its principal compilers (along with Mr. Stewart), 

 could give any special information on Antrim flints 

 that may be wanted. He contributed a very scholarly 

 paper on "Rudely-worked Flints of County Antrim," 

 giving the cliff sections from which the flint material 

 came, to the Journal of the Royal Hist, and Archceolog. 

 Society of Ireland (now the Royal Soc. of Antiquaries, 

 Ireland). I have just hunted through the back vols. 

 in my Antiq. bookcase, and I find that it is con- 

 tained in vol. 5, 4th Series, in 1879-82. Mr. Gray's 

 address is Mount Charles, Belfast, and he probably 

 could send a " reprint," as the society furnishes all 

 readers of papers with, I think, fifty reprints. Mr. 

 Thos. Plunkett, F.G.S., M.R.I.A., of Enniskillen, 

 could give you any information about the bands of 

 cherty flints that occur in the great inland limestone 

 cliffs (Carboniferous) of Knockmore, county Fer- 

 managh, if he has none of the reprints from his 

 papers contributed to the Royal Irish Academy, of 

 which he is a member. — R. Welch. 



" What Offers ? " — Will you allow me to suggest 

 that those correspondents who make use of the "Ex- 

 change " column, in Science-Gossip, should give 

 some indication of tbe kind of exchange they desire. 

 " What offers?" is very indefinite, but " What offers 

 in " — say — " birds' eggs ? " " shells ? " or " insects ? " 

 or " cash ?" would afford information which would 

 very often save other people's time and trouble. I 



have found recently that these indefinite gentlemen 

 want to sell — usually at good prices — and it seems to 

 me that such offers ought not to be classed under the 

 heading of ' ' Exchanges, " as they are misleading. I 

 would suggest that you should start a separate column 

 for the benefit of those who wish to effect exchanges 

 for coin of the realm. Whether you should make a 

 charge, or not, to those who 'use it, is your affair and 

 no concern of mine, but the present system of lumping 

 the two classes together is inconvenient and mis- 

 leading. I do not wish my name to appear in con- 

 nection with this suggestion, as I have no doubt the 

 people to whom I refer would resent it. 



Extinction of the Lapwing. — I note in the 

 February number a paragraph speaking of the pro- 

 bable extinction of the lapwing, owing to the rapacity 

 of egg collectors and dealers, and in the same number 

 I noticed no fewer than five advertisements (including 

 exchanges) of these gentry. These are the pests who 

 are rapidly bringing about the extermination of all 

 our rare birds, and preventing the breeding here of 

 any occasional visitors from other regions. It is 

 absurd to dignify such an occupation by the name of 

 science ; it is mere sordid greed, which all good 

 naturalists should discourage to the utmost, and it 

 would be a good deed if Science-Gossip and all 

 other respectable publications were to refuse such 

 advertisements. — W. Ward. 



NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. 



To Correspondents and Exchangers. — As we now 

 publish Science-Gossip earlier than formerly, we cannot un- 

 dertake to insert in the following number any communications 

 which reach us later than the Sth of the previous month. 



To Anonymous Querists. — We must adhere to our rule of 

 not noticing queries which do not bear the writers' names. 



To Dealers and Others. — We are always glad to treat 

 dealers in natural history objects on the same fair and general 

 ground as amateurs, in so far as the "exchanges" offered are 

 fair exchanges. But it is evident that, when their offers are 

 simply Disguised Advertisements, for the purpose of evading 

 the cost of advertising, an advantage is taken of our gratuitous 

 insertion of "exchanges," which cannot be tolerated. 



We request that all exchanges may be signed with name (or 

 initials) and full address at the end. 



Special Note. — There is a tendency on the part of some 

 exchangers to send more than one per month. We only allow 

 this in the case of writers of papers. 



To our Recent Exchangers. — We are willing to be helpful 

 to our genuine naturalists, but we cannot further allow dis- 

 guised. Exchanges like those which frequently come to us 

 to appear unless as advertisements. 



R. B. Postans. — Will you kindly send us your address, so 

 that proofs of your articles may be sent you? 



A. Launder.— *' Flowers: their Origin, Perfume, Shape, 

 Colours," can be obtained of Messrs. W. H. Allen & Co. 

 Masters' work on Teratology is now getting scarce ; it was 

 published by the Ray Society. You had best apply to Messrs. 

 Wesley & Son, Essex Street, Strand, for a secondhand copy, 

 or to Messrs. Dulau, 37 Soho Square. 



W. Palmer.— Get Bennett's work (fully illustrated), pub- 

 lished by Longmans at, we believe, 4s. 6d. Other good books 

 are Prantl and Vine's "Botany" (Macmillan), and Hooker's 

 " Botany" (same publisher). 



A correspondent from the Isle of Wight, whose note we 

 have mislaid, sends us a box containing teeth and bony scales, 

 under the impression that both are fossils. This is not the 

 case. The teeth are recent, but the bony scales" are plates of 

 siluroid fishes from the Eocene strata. 



F. J. Bing. — The snake-like fossil in flint is undoubtedly a 

 Serpula. They are not unfrequent. We have seen them coiled 

 like a basket of snakes on the surface of flints, and penetrating 

 their interior. The Norwich chalk and chalk flints are famous 

 for them. 



