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JOURNAL OF THE EOYAL HOETICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 



of any British species of feathered folk in that of 'bird.' " It is evident 

 that he has not mixed much with shooting men ; in old times the name 

 was no doubt given by them to the partridge, which was then the bird 

 par excellence in their estimation, and to this day a sportsman will use the 

 word " bird ' ' when speaking of a partridge. 



On page 252, in alluding to the grubs of " Ichneumon flies " the 

 following curious expression is used : " In a word the little mite eats its 

 own environment." The writer should have said the little grub, so as 

 not to run any risk of being misunderstood; the word " environment " 

 is hardly suitable for a boy's book, and it is generally used with a 

 totally different significance. The author in writing about ichneumon 

 flies is apparently dealing with a matter of which he knows nothing. 

 They are insects belonging to the order Hymenoptera, and like the 

 other members of the order have four wings, and as a rule their bodies 

 are long and slender, and are very unlike the figures given. These 

 figures represent two-winged flies belonging to the order Diptera and 

 presumably to the family Tachinidae, a subdivision of the family 

 Muscidae to which the common bluebottle flies and house flies belong. 

 These flies, as well as the ichneumon flies, lay their eggs in the 

 caterpillars of various insects, and the grubs when hatched devour their 

 hosts in much the same way as the ichneumon grubs do. The figures 

 illustrating this subject are very poor indeed. 



The author is puzzled because the name of bittercress is given to 

 the Lady's smock, or Cuckoo-flower (Gardamine pratensis), as the leaves 

 have not a bitter flavour. But the term bittercress in various botanical 

 works is applied to all the species belonging to this genus ; one of the 

 species is G. amara. 



On page 283, the common oak galls known as " marble galls " are said 

 to be "oak apples," which are a very different kind of gall, very much 

 larger, of quite a different consistency, containing a large number of grubs, 

 and not quite spherical as the marble galls are. The author's views as 

 to the formation of oak galls are not those accepted at the present day ; 

 the cause of the formation of the galls is not the piercing of the tissues of 

 the plant by the gall-fly when laying her eggs, but the action of the grub 

 when it is hatched feeding on the tissues, which appears to cause a more 

 abundant supply of the sap of the plant to that part, resulting in the 

 abnormal growths known as galls. Should the grub die, the growth of 

 the gall ceases, showing that it is the action of the grub which causes 

 the growth. 



The description of the cause of double apples is altogether incorrect. 

 We do not find in the case of double apples that each has a separate 

 stem as they would have " if the growth of two fruits in close proximity 

 to one another became fused together, thus forming a double fruit." 

 The explanation of the monstrosity is that two flowers were formed 

 on the same pedicel so that they were in such close proximity that 

 there was a fusion of the two young fruits. 



In a pocket in the cover at the end of the book are two folded plates, 

 one of the British butterflies, the other of their caterpillars and those 

 of some moths. These insects are briefly described in two appendices. 

 The figures of the butterflies are fairly good, but some of those of the 



