4 
NATURE NOTES 
from abroad or from Ireland, or even from other growers in Great Britain, to 
observe the following precautions : — 
(1) Only to purchase from those growers or dealers who are prepared to offer 
a guarantee that the plants they are selling are of their own growing, and that no 
case of American gooseberry mildew has ever appeared in their gardens or in the 
immediate neighbourhood, and that the said plants have not been near any 
gooseberry plants recently brought on to the seller’s premises. 
(2) To plant such gooseberry bushes or stocks as they may buy or acquire 
from other premises than their own, in a special part of their nursery or garden, 
at some distance from other gooseberry bushes. 
(3) To destroy all plants found to be affected with the mildew, and to spray 
with Bordeaux mixture all others suspected of being infested, with the object of 
destroying any external mycelium or adhering spores that may be present. This 
should be carried out during the period when the disease is dormant. 
(4) To keep a careful watch on all gooseberry plants in the forthcoming 
spring for any signs of mildew, and to report any appearance suggestive of the 
disease to the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, 4, Whitehall 
Place, London, S.W., immediately it is detected. 
(5) To assist the Board in discovering any unreported cases of the infestation 
during the past summer. 
There is at present no law dealing with the eradication of the pests of fruit 
trees in this country, but the Board believe that the American gooseberry mildew 
has not spread very far as yet, and that it depends very largely on the action of 
the fruit-growers, nurserymen, and market gardeners, whether its further develop- 
ment can be prevented. 
Board of Agricullure and Fisheries^ 4, Whitehall Place, London, S. W. 
452. Erinus alpinus. —This plant grows on lime stone walls of a school 
near Clitheroe, within a quarter of a mile of the site of a Roman road as marked 
on the 6-inch ordnance map. As this spot is on the border of Yorkshire and 
Lancashire, if you read “ road ” instead of “ wall ” the passage in “ British 
Flora ” referred to by Mr. E. Hodgson (444), will not be far wide of the mark. 
Blackburn. A. M. Broadbent. 
453. Pythons. — While I should not care to go quite so far as to say that 
a full-grown or even exceedingly large python could not kill and swallow a tiger, 
I think there is no difficulty in accounting for the apparent inaccuracies in the 
quotation given by Mr. Houghton (No. 415). The missionary swears to the 
correctness of the facts of the incident, and 1 see nothing impossible in it, except 
that the animal in question was a tiger. Mr. Daubeny’s comments are sufficient 
to refute that, and if we substitute ^'■leopard" for “ tiger f all difficulties vanish. 
I do not know whether it is customary to call leopards, “ tigers,” in Ceylon ; seeing 
that jaguars are so called in America, the cases seem parallel. 
Hale E}id, Chingford. C. NICHOLSON. 
454 . The Intelligence of a Horse. — It is difficult to be convinced that 
the case in No. 431 can be looked upon as one of ecjuine intelligence. It 
may be purely accidental. At the risk of being severely hauled over the coals, 
but by way of hoping to see the matter discussed in Naiure Notes, let me say 
that the intelligence of the horse seems to be of a low order, and that in a 
civilised country like England it has little or no chance of improving. The one 
thing above all others required in a horse is obedience. A horse that has a 
will of his own, and is determined to show it, is seriously handicapped. Those 
horses that give up thinking, that submit to their masters' orders, and carry out 
his requirements as to beauty, strength and speed, are the most useful and most 
highly prized, and therefore the most likely to be allowed to live and carry on 
the race. Under such conditions the brain of any animal must deteriorate. 
When, however, the horse runs wild, as in Australia, he has to think for himself, 
and to work out the problems of self-preservation. The change soon shows 
itself. He becomes as intelligent as the wild creatures among which his lot 
is cast, but generally at the expense of beauty, and many other (jualities valuable 
to man. Most wild horses are large in the head, and, bodily speaking, inferior 
to the English animal. The brains of cattle, sheep and the domestic duck have 
also suffered from subjection to man. 
Southacre, Swaffham. Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
