NATURE NOTES 
156 
an early settler, and its long, graceful trails and masses of cream-coloured flowers 
hang luxuriantly down the steep banks. Conspicuous on the low mounds of the 
foreground are tall teasel plants ; with ample space for expanding, each stiff 
thorny stem with its crowning candelabra of flowers rises in stately isolation from 
the wide flat rosette of root leaves which curve into prickly edges, the whole like 
some fine design in old ironwork. On the flower-heads the first row of florets 
to expand is one half-way down the cone, those next above and below following, 
so that both the highest and lowest remain longest in bud. Is not this an 
unusual sequence, and what is the Darwinian reason for such an arrangement? 
Scarcely less artistic are the lines of the musk thistle not far off, its heavy 
crimson flower-heads drooping with sudden curve of their thick upright stems 
amomg the waving edges and sharp spines of their long leaves. The air is 
scented with marjoram which has strayed in from the neighbouring mountain 
turf, where a dwarfer form as well as a white variety grows among thyme, rock- 
roses and harebells. The pale sulphur toad-flax, the bright blue and pink 
viper’s bugloss, and the yellow spikes of the golden-rod stand out in bright 
colouring against the background of grey limestone. Among the less conspicuous 
plants are the wild mignonette, the carrot, and the aromatic wood-sage ; the so- 
called diue flea-bane being perhaps the only rare plant in this rock garden. — L.C. 
[The order of opening among the florets of the teasel is certainly interesting, 
and but little dealt with in ordinary text-books. The facts are mentioned in 
“The Country Month by Month,” p. 291 ; and Mr. J. C. Willis, in his Flower- 
ing Plants and Ferns,” ed. l, vol. ii., p. 135, under “ Dipsacete,” says: “That 
the heads are also cymose is indicated by the fact that the flowers do not open in 
strictly centripetal order.” To give a Darwinian or utilitarian explanation of the 
relative advantages of definite and indefinite branching is beyond us. — Ed. N.N.'\ 
NATURAL HISTORY QUERIES. 
145 . Thrushes. — A relative in Ireland mentions a peculiarity. The thrushes 
frequently knock beech-nuts on her paved garden-walk and on the hard road, 
producing quite an intermittent loud noise ; and, watching the birds, she has 
invariably found them to be empty husks. Would some reader favour us with an 
explanation ? C. 
146 . Cuckoo. — I send you a cutting from a Worcester paper which gives 
an account of part of a ramble of the VVorcestershire Naturalists’ Club. May 
I ask if there is any support for either of the ideas therein set out as to the 
way in which the hedge-sparrows’ eggs and young are got rid of? I see that 
Yarrell alludes to both these ideas only to refute them. G. F. Adams. 
“ In Mr. Morris’s garden at Martley was the nest of a hedge-sparrow. It had 
contained four eggs of the hedge-sparrow and a cuckoo’s egg. On the day 
preceding the Club’s visit the young cuckoo had hatched out, three of the hedge- 
sparrow’s eggs had disappeared, and one was on the outer rim of the nest. It 
was perfectly obvious that the callow cuckoo could not have turned the eggs out 
of the nest. The young bird was in a perfectly feeble state, and there was 
considerable difference of opinion as to how the eggs had been removed. Mr. 
Morris favoured the idea that the foster-mother, impressed with the abnormal size 
of her young, had herself removed the eggs in order to give the cuckoo room to 
develop ; others favoured the idea that the mother cuckoo, solicitous for the wel- 
fare of her offspring, had waited for the hatching of the cuckoo and had then taken 
the eggs. No one who saw the condition of the young cuckoo believed that it 
could have had strength sufficient to do it even if it had possessed the intelligence. 
Moreover, if the young bird had done it the eggs would have been in the neighbour- 
hood of the nest, whereas three of them had entirely disappeared.” 
ASTRONOMICAL NOTES FOR AUGUST, 1908. 
Mercury will be visible as a morning star on the first few days of the month, 
rising nearly one and three-quarter hours before the sun. 
Venus will attain maximum brilliancy on the loth at 1.44 a.m., and about 
three hours before the sun. She will be situated in Gemini, and on the 8th is 
