SELBORNIANA, &c. 
n 
a year. The eggs of one species ( Avion hovtensis), are phos- 
phorescent for the first fifteen days. 
Land snails and slugs have many enemies beside man ; they 
afford food for birds, especially for the thrush tribe, and also for 
insects, as the predacious beetle and the luminous larva of the 
glow-worm that lies like a living green spark on our lawns of a 
dark summer night. 
Too wholesale a destruction of slugs would destroy the 
beautifully adjusted balance of nature, interference with which 
we have lived to regret too often as the result of man’s selfish, 
thoughtless abuse of his power over the lower animals. 
[Mr. Anthony Belt, of Ealing, tells us that he has been the 
recipient of similar attentions from Avion ater, but that the pro- 
cess was one of biting or rasping, rather than sucking. We are 
inclined to refer it to the ordinary saw-like action of the odonto- 
phore exercised upon the soft flesh of the finger, rather than 
to any sanguinary propensities on the part of the slug ; but 
should be glad to learn the experience of malacologists on the 
interesting subject to which Miss Buckton has drawn attention.] 
SELBORNIANA, DOINGS OF THE MONTH, &c. 
The New Poems of Lord Tennyson, President of the Selborne 
Society. — The latest volume of our President, Demeter , and other Poems, 
proves that there is not the slightest falling off in his powers or in his love of 
Nature. In “ Owd Ro'a ” (Old Rover), he tells of a clog’s saving a child from 
death by fire. Maimed and blind the brave brute lives on, and years after his 
master says of the loyal servant, in words which might bring some shame to those 
who speak with scorn of what they are pleased to call the “ inferior ” animals : — 
“ Sarved me sa well when ’e lived, that Dick, when ’e cooms to be dead, 
I thinks as I’d like fur to hev soom soort of a sarvice read, 
‘ Faaithful an’ True ’ — them words be i’ Scripture— an’ Faaithful an’ True 
Ull be fun’ upo’ four short legs ten times fur one upo’ two.” 
The admirable fidelity with which Tennyson has always depicted the details 
of Nature is shown in the following lines from the ‘'Progress of Spring” : — 
“ The groundflame of the crocus breaks the mould, 
Fair Spring slides hither o’er the Southern sea, 
"Wavers on her thin stem the snowdrop cold 
That trembles not to kisses of the bee : 
Come, Spring ! for now from all the dripping eaves 
The spear of ice has wept itself away, 
And hour by hour unfolding woodbine leaves 
O’er his uncertain shadow droops the day. 
She comes ! The loosen’d rivulets run ; 
The frost-bead melts upon her golden hair ; 
Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sun, 
Now wraps her close, now arching leaves her bare 
To breaths of balmier air ; 
Up leaps the lark, gone wild to welcome her, 
About her glance the tits, and shriek the jays, 
Before her skims the jubilant woodpecker, 
