EDITORIAL GLEANINGS-. 115 



encountering a fine burst of rhetoric, even though the point of view be 

 rather that of utility than of beauty : — 



" Extremo autem hoc tempore [that of the first visible rising of the 

 Pleiades about the second week in May] panici miliique satio est. In- 

 credibili benignitate naturse ! Jam Vergilias in ccelo notabiles caterva 

 fecerat ; non tamen his contenta, terrestres fecit alias, veluti vociferans, 

 Cur ccelurn intuearis, agricola ? Ecce tibi inter herbas tuas spargo 

 peculiares Stellas, easque vespere et ab opere disjungenti ostendo, ac 

 ne possis praoterire, miraculo solicito. Habes ante pedes tuos ecce 

 Vergilias." 



In another place (lib. xi. cap. 34) Pliny speaks of Fireflies under 

 the name lampyrides ; " Lucent ignium modo noctu, laterum et clunium 

 colore, [candore ?] lampyrides, nunc pennarum hiatu refulgentes, nunc 

 vero compressu obumbratse ; non ante matura pabula aut post desecta 

 conspicua3." It will have been observed that, although he begins by 

 representing the cicindelce as winged insects, he ends by describing 

 them as creeping among the grass. It would seem that he confused 

 the firefly with the glowworm, following the authority of Aristotle, who 

 says, as quoted by Pliny's commentators, that some lampyrides are 

 winged and others wingless, just like ants. 



Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown has reprinted, in a complete and con- 

 venient form, his series of articles published in the ' Annals of Scottish 

 Natural History,' 1902-3, " On the Avifauna of the Outer Hebrides, 

 1888-1902." This now constitutes an important booklet on Scottish 

 ornithology, and one that can be catalogued as a separate publication, 

 which is no small boon to a naturalist with congested book-shelves. 



A paper originally published in the ' Century Magazine ' (1900) by 

 Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton, on the " National Zoo at Washington," 

 has just been republished in the last Smithsonian Report (1902). 

 Besides some beautiful illustrations, there are many original remarks 

 in the text. As regards the extinction of any animal life, more 

 especially of the early progenitors of our domestic animals, Mr. Seton 

 remarks that if the early hunters "had succeeded in exterminating 

 them before their stock was domesticated, which might easily have 

 been, for domestication succeeds only after long and persistent effort 

 and, in effect, a remodelling of the wild animal by select breeding, the 

 loss to the world would have been a very serious matter, probably much 



