HARD IVICA'E'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



S 1 



•contact with the stigmatic surface, and fertilize the 

 "flower. 



The ordinary movement of depression does not 

 take place in Pkalceiiopsis amabilis aud Phalcenopsis 

 Luddimanianum ; but the straight pedicel, after re- 

 moval, immediately becomes arched, or bowed, in 

 the centre, owing to its elasticity. 



When the pollen-masses of Disa grandiflora are 

 removed from the anther-cells, they do not undergo 

 the usual movement of depression, for the weight of 

 the pollen-masses is sufficient to adjust them into a 

 position suitable to come in contact with the stig- 

 matic surfaces of the flowers. 



THE BOSQUET OF JULIA. 

 By A. H. Swinton. 



THE storms that scour the Channel arrive not 

 always at this region of milk and honey, to 

 stir up the black bile. The' days that precede the vin- 

 tage at Clarens are sweetly sunny, and the Dent du 

 Midi shows its three molars and an eye-tooth, almost 

 divested of their lip of creamy snow, whose presence, 

 as the cloud level falls, explains to the peasant in a 

 simple way why the destructive hail is formed over- 

 head. Below, in the mirror of the lake that mur- 

 murs not, the dainty gulls, Lams ridibundus, fleck 

 the deeps around the Castle of Chillon ; the wine- 

 press is prepared, the atrocious starlings are arriving 

 in flocks, and the sunflowers, which soon attain an 

 age of discretion, are quite hent with the burden of 

 their platter-shaped heads. Tell me, youth, I pray 

 thee, where is this Bosquet of Julia, ycleped the oak- 

 grove of Lauvabelin, that we may repose awhile 

 from travel and the burden of years, beneath the bend 

 of the stirring branches ? The reply is lost in the 

 whir of the electric tramcars that go whizzing past 

 along the prosaic villa-lined roadway, and in the 

 exclamations'. of a party of maidens, who are pointing 

 upwards to the grey limestone peaks, black with firs, 

 as a proper sanctum for five o'clock tea. There is 

 not, and doubtless never was, any bosquet replete 

 with fairy-formed and many-coloured things, and 

 they are inviting us to track their nimble feet up the 

 steps of shingle, scored and rounded in glacial days, 

 to the green upland slopes, where bashful spring 

 pours forth her baskets of white and scented narcissus, 

 oxlip, primroses, and topaz-blue gentians ; let us, then, 

 follow and see what the season has in store. Pos- 

 sessed with pleasant thoughts, how soon the blandish- 

 ments of the aerial silence are gained, and see already 

 the intrusive vineyards, planted by the beneficent 

 monks, and presided over by the cupids, lie below ; 

 and no sound now greets the ear save the threshing 

 of walnuts, the drop of the gravid pear, and the dis- 

 tant echo of the woodman's axe, from where yonder 

 streamlet delves down its long cleft into a seething 

 cauldron, and a canopy of stalactites, feathered with 



moss and plumed with fig-leaves, is dripping its 

 diamond drops to augment the silky blue of Leman's 

 Lake. Cockneys, they tell us by the way, come 

 here and say that this delightful appearance is due to 

 suspended particles of dust, and return to wonder 

 why the Thames is not bluer, whereas a little atten- 

 tion of a cloudy morning is sufficient to convince 

 any one that the blinks are painted on the blue 

 reflecting water, and reason says that their brightness 

 is due to the amount of sunlight ; for do not Iris and 

 Aurora here roam on earth, descended from the sun 

 the summer long? 



Les Avants on the left and the Pont de Pierre on 

 right, says the sign-post, with reference to the past 

 and present — whither are we bound ? Could a doubt 

 be entertained? There is- hardly time to pick a 

 snowy spray of Berteroa from the refuse-heap beside 

 the hen-coops, a place of resort from which we have 

 sometimes started that pretty bird the hoopoe ; and 

 the merry voices are already heard resounding down 

 in the dreadfully steep ravine, leaving us to discover 

 a recreative zephyr, where sun and shadow meet and 

 sport upon a sleepy meadow. It is too late in the 

 season to expect that flying wonder AscalapJius 

 cocajas, neither bee nor beetle, to come wandering 

 by. Let us, with the assistance of Dr. Schoch's 

 handy little pamphlet, " Die Schweizerischen Orthop- 

 tern," published at Zurich in 1876, try and name the 

 grasshopper hordes that crowd like knights errant 

 around. Here is, to be sure, Stenobothrits pratorum, 

 pricking off his notes with fourteen beats of his black 

 knees, rufipes in red and black, affecting the shades, 

 the golden green Brachyterus, interesting on account 

 of its semiapterous condition, and Morio with the 

 dilated fore-wings, loud and boisterous and earliest 

 to appear. He, of all the little grasshoppers, is per- 

 haps the only one that will live and thrive in confine- 

 ment, when moving his crank-like legs from thirty- 

 five to forty times,'and striking with the end of his 

 bow, he diffuses a bird-like warble through the 

 room — a call to industry- — resembling the dirl of a 

 circular saw, followed by scissor snippings, which is 

 rung out day and night until the moon refills her 

 horn, in defiant response to the carpenter's plane, 

 the blacksmith's hammer, and the rumble of the car- 

 riage-wheels, as though he resented the appropriation 

 of his green orchestral meadows by the mechanical 

 crew who have created an engine that roars and 

 screams. How plentiful and various are the grass- 

 hoppers ! had we a season to spend in a chalet, we 

 might seek some confirmation of the presentiment 

 that the females love a male wearing their own 

 favours, and that nascent species thus take their rise 

 from the ring-streaked, specked and spotted ; or we 

 might seriously enquire whether an occasional white- 

 ness appearing in all the hoppers, were not a kind of 

 goiter due to the limestone soil, and ask why others 

 are so very pink, for certainly the pink selection 

 would be a pretty one. Now let us continue on to 



D 2 



