CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 



547 



House bug. — While in Poonah, East Indies, finding that immense 

 quantities of domestic bugs were in the rooms,, I diverted myself with 

 observing their history and economy. Bingley says, if I recollect right, 

 that they remain twelve clays in the egg state. To prove this, on the 

 23rd of May, 1826, I placed eight eggs, deposited by a female the same 

 morning, in a small box, and on the 28th the young insect emerged 

 from its confinement, having been but five days, instead of twelve, 

 encased in the egg. 



Most insects that suck the blood of animals refuse that of the un- 

 healthy, but these seem not to regard such a circumstance. I knew 

 them prey on men in every stage of sickness, and even where mercury 

 and antimonials had been introduced most freely into the system. 



L. W. Clarke. 



Birmingham. 



Growth of stones. — The celebrated French naturalist, Tourne- 

 forte, inferred that rocks grow, from the circumstance of names which 

 are cut in the famous grotto of Antiparos, in the Grecian Archipelago, 

 appearing a few years afterwards in alto relievo. Linnaeus also laid it 

 down as a first principle, that iC stones grow;" while "vegetables grow 

 and live ; and animals grow, live, and feel." But except in the case 

 of depositions of stony matter from an aqueous solution, such as occa- 

 sions the relieving of names cut in the rock at Antiparos, and the 

 incrustation of wigs, birds' nests,, birch -brooms, and other things exposed 

 to its influence at Matlock, in Derbyshire, stones and rocks may more 

 correctly be affirmed to decrease than to increase, subjected, as all 

 those which are uncovered must be, to the repeated action of rains 

 and frosts. In the beds of rivers, and the basin of the sea, the 

 incessant motion of the water must, in the same way, produce a constant 

 wearing down into sand of the hardest rocks and stones which are 

 there deposited. 



Truffles. — We discovered many years ago an immense stock of 

 very small truffles, crowded together under a young cedar tree upon 

 the lawn near the house at Highclere. Mr. Gowen tried successfully 

 the experiment of transplanting several of these, and setting them 

 under beech trees, marking the spots where they were planted. They 

 increased in size, and became much finer than those which were left. 



Hon. & Rev. W. Herbert. 



