76 The West American Scientist. 
an excellent preserve or jelly and may be dried and used like 
preserved apples. 
In waterless localities the fleshy roots of the needle or pin-bush 
Hakea leucoptera, yield good drinking water tothose who under- 
stand how to get it. | 
The Rumquat or desert melon, Atlantia glanca, may be made 
into a fair preserve. 
An infusion from the fragrant bark of the sassafras, (Athero- 
sperma moschata) is used in the form of a beer and has a pleas- 
ant taste when taken with plenty of milk. 
The natives of New South Wales and Queensland prepare a 
cake which resembles a coarse ship biscuit from a bean tree 
known as /talic or Bogum. 
In cases of severe thirst much relief may be obtained by chew- 
ing the leaves of the shingle oak (Casnarina stricta.) Being of an 
acid nature the chewing of the leaves produces a flow of saliva. 
The native currant (Coprosura Billardieri), the oor of the 
natives of Coranderrk station was formerly used by the settlers in 
making puddings. 
BRIEFER ARTICLES: 
PRESERVING THE CoLors OF FLowERsS.—A process of preserv- 
ing the colors of flowers in dried specimens, as used in Berlin, 
consists of steeping the plants in a solution of sulphurous acid con- 
taining one-fourth of its volume of methylated spirit. Delicate 
flowers require an imersion of but five or ten minutes, and thick 
leaves as much as twenty-four hours. They are then removed, 
the fluid is allowed to evaporate, and the plants are dried between 
paper in the usual way. - Sct. American. 
A PETRIFIED BrRD’s NEst.—Harlan H. Ballard, President of 
the Agassiz Association, describes in S¢. Wcholas for June, his 
experience with a petrified bird’s nest containing three eggs. It 
is a useful article and a timely warning against being “taken in’’ 
by any apparently wonderful production of nature. These nests 
it seems, are prepared in Italy by immersing in water impregnat- 
ed with mineral salts, thus producing an artificial petrifaction. 
It may be well to note the distinction between the words, petri- 
faction, and fossil, which are too often used as synomyns: a 
petrifaction may be defined as anything ‘‘turned to stone,’’ or en- 
crusted by a mineral substance, and may be either natural or art- 
ificial; a fossil is ‘‘a substance dug from the earth,” or plant or 
animal remains (petrified or otherwise), from the strata compos- 
ing the surface of the earth. It would not be strange if the nest 
described by Prof. Ballard had been a natural petrifaction as he 
supposes it may be but for the presence of ¢hvee eggs. It would 
be possible for a bird in our western country to build and hatch 
its young in such a situation as he describes, where the nest at a 
different season might be subject to the overflow of a non-peren- 

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