52 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 















streams, where there is some danger of savants losing their scalps. One 
rib has been detached and ground up into powder by the Indians for med- 
icine.—Joun D. PARKER, Topeka, Kansas. # 
a5 referred your letter and photograph to Professor J. Wyman, W. 
tes: 
“Thé chil ograph is unluckily taken from an oblique point of view, 
which I believe Lee will never learn to be a bad one. If the view had 
been full front, or full side, or full anything, it would have been better 
render the production of sound and well-developed fruit more sure. 
botanists think if it were not for bees and other insects, many plants 
would not fruit at all. This whole subject of the great office bees and 
other insects perform in the fertilization of plants has been fully discus- 
sed in the May, July, and October numbers of the AMERICAN Na 
ride by RTT Asa Gray in the AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, beginning 
ay, 
Pi is iy ae that bees do injury in some way by extracting the honey 
owers. What is the use in nature of honey? The best observers 
If all the bees were to be destroyed, I for one, if a farmer, would prefe: 
to go into some other business. This prejudice against bees a to u: 
+ ee 
R. H., Nichols, N. = — The hymenopterous insect from the sug 
maple tree is the Tremex columba. It bores, while in the larva state, i 
the trunk of the maple and oak. The beetles are Copris anaglypticus $ 
Cicindela sexguttata, Ancylocheira 6-plagiata and A. fasciata. The fy 8 
allied to Tabanus, the House-fly, and has a powerful bite. 
E. B., Wheeling, West Virginia.—The microscopic form found in 
ruvian Guano appears to be one of the Polycystine. The only auth 
that we know of is Ehrenberg’s Microgeologie. Specific, and even 
neric names, are almost useless in this group of Rhizoi seemed —C.5S. 
