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HA RD WICKE ' S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



states in one of his books that every owl was worth 

 £S per year to the British nation. It is chiefly a 

 field-mouse and vole feeder, and therefore checks the 

 otherwise harmful results of the procreativeness of 

 those familiar rodents. Some parts of Scotland, 

 during the last two summers, have suffered terribly 

 from the pest of voles, perhaps to the amount of 

 scores of thousands of pounds, and Sir Herbert 

 Maxwell was appointed to form a committee to 

 report to Parliament. This report to Parliament will 

 probably be presented before these notes are printed, 

 and it cannot fail to be of an interesting character. 

 The inference will be that the gamekeepers of game- 

 preserving landlords must not be allowed to rule the 

 zoological balance of the British Islands. Last 

 summer certain parts of Greece, especially Thessaly, 

 were terribly overrun by the same species of rodent, 

 inasmuch as the Greek Government called in dis- 

 tinguished French and German zoologists to advise 

 thereon. Thessaly is chiefly inhabited by Moham- 

 medans, and they have recently sent to Mecca for 

 some holy water to get rid of the voles ! 



Visiting-cards are almost amongst the necessities 

 of the age, insomuch that no well-brought-up or 

 respectable maidservant can be without them. Those 

 who have to move about the world have always 

 found them of service, and in not a few instances a 

 few of them in his waistcoat pocket might have 

 saved many an innocent man from a night in jail. 

 Hitherto they have been made of pasteboard, but 

 now they are being manufactured of iron. " Inven- 

 tion" states that forty of these iron visiting cards, 

 piled one upon the other, form a layer of only the 

 one-tenth part of an inch in thickness. The plates 

 are black, and the names are printed on them in 

 silver, so that they show up very clearly and 

 artistically. 



Land-surveying will henceforth be carried on 

 more effectively and picturesquely than hitherto, by 

 the aid of photography. The successful application 

 of the latter has been demonstrated without doubt, 

 both in Europe and America. Since the year 1888 

 a zone of twenty miles on each side of the Canadian 

 Pacific Railway has been surveyed with the aid of 

 photography. Four men were employed upon the job, 

 and they have got through between 900 and 1000 

 miles a year, thanks to photography, in spite of the 

 great disadvantages of the climate. 



Dr. Vines, the Professor of Botany in the 

 University of Oxford, has for some time past had in 

 preparation a "Student's Text-book of Botany," 

 which will be more comprehensive than his edition 

 of Prantl's well-known "Elementary Text-book." 

 Although the work will not compete either in size or 

 in price with the larger handbooks, it is hoped that it 

 will be found to contain, in proportion to its size, a 

 greater amount of accurate information than any 



other general work on the subject. It is to be fully 

 illustrated, and is expected to be ready early in the 

 autumn of this year. It will be published by Messrs. 

 Swan Sonnenschein & Co., in London, and by 

 Messrs. Macmillan & Co., in New York. 



We have much pleasure in noticing the Report of 

 the Felstead School Natural History Society Club 

 for the past two years. We are always glad to 

 welcome a new society of nature's observers, or even 

 a single observer of nature ; but whilst scanning this 

 report, we are sorry to see that young lepidopterists 

 are permitted to excursionise before learning that ten 

 bad specimens are not worth one good one, and we 

 would advise the ramblers to go at it more gently, 

 and not to cripple the specimens. 



Millions of shooting stars pass through the earth's 

 atmosphere every day. At night, when it is dark 

 enough, we can see the long trails of light left 

 behind by the larger ones, but in the daytime such 

 appearances are rare indeed, and are due to excep- 

 tionable instances. By day and night, however, 

 meteorites are passing to and from our earth's atmo- 

 sphere, like bees in a hive. Each is a true planet, 

 although it may only weigh two ounces. These 

 shooting stars travel at a rate of between thirty and 

 forty miles a second. As long as they circulate in 

 what we call space, there is little or no friction, and 

 therefore no waste. But as soon as they pass into 

 the denser medium of what we call the earth's 

 atmosphere, the friction of their rapid movement 

 generates heat, of such a high temperature that the 

 long trails of brilliant light they leave behind in the 

 sky are a manifestation of it. 



Shooting stars, or meteorites, have been roughly, 

 but naturally, separated into two great classes — 

 stony and metallic, according as they contain 50 per 

 cent, more of one or the other. The largest of these 

 celestial bodies which have been overcome by the 

 gravitation of the earth, have reached the surface of 

 the latter with an immense impact, sufficient to 

 bury themselves sometimes many feet into the soil. 

 Some of these heavenly descended visitors are 

 historic. St. Paul refers to one partially worshipped 

 at Ephesus in the Acts of the Apostles. The black 

 or Caaba stone of Mecca, which attracts hundreds of 

 thousands of Mohammedans every year, only for the 

 sake of kissing it, is another. The semi-ancient 

 Aztecs, who evolved the highest form of religion in 

 the New World before its discovery by Europeans, 

 paid worship to several meteoric stones of large size, 

 which had descended from the sky. Recently, an 

 important meteorite fell in the Canyon Diablo, in 

 Western America, and portions of it have been 

 carefully studied by the most distinguished of French 

 mineralogists. One remarkable thing in the metallic 

 meteorites above referred to, is the combination of 

 iron and nickel, in a way that we know not of on our 



