54 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 
as they are accustomed to do in March, whilst the animal and insect 
world all show decided indications of a premature season. Last Sunday, 
on the Dogstliorpe Road, a resident caught a fine specimen of butterfly 
(probably Vanessa urticce ), whilst the common honey bee has been roused 
from its dormant condition these three weeks, and may be seen 
settling on the opening spring flowers, both wild and cultivated. The 
North Bank and the meadows around are thickly sprinkled with daisies, 
and the wild foxglove in warm haunts is beginning to throw up 
flowering spikelets, and thus, in common with the whole of nature, 
showing the remarkable mildness of the season.—E. Wheeler, Peter¬ 
borough, Jan, 17, 1884. 
Notes from Woking.— The mild weather seems to have upset the 
insects altogether from their winter slumbers. The Blow Fly ( Musca 
vomitoria) was quite plentiful on the walls and palings on December 
28th, 1883, New Year’s Day being danced in by small companies of the 
Spring Gnat (Trichocera vernalis ), whilst the female of Gulex pipiens 
and her big sister, annulatus, seemed to be looking about for a likely 
water butt wherein they might place their baskets of eggs ; but like 
human beiugs, they are procrastinating, and don’t seem to know 
whether to “go in” for another snooze, or a little human blood. 
Creeping up the glass on the inside of the greenhouse and windows, 
I noticed a large number of minute Hymenoptera, some of which no 
doubt had emerged from their pupos in the various species of Green 
Fly, which abound on everything in a damp lean-to house. 
January 10th.—The sun shone out so brightly that a small Tortoise¬ 
shell Butterfly ( Vanessa urticce ) felt compelled to come out and try 
its wings again, rejoicing in the glorious freedom—now alighting on the 
wall, basking in the warm sunshine, then with that peculiar flutter 
off it sailed over the tops of the houses. January 12th.—A sudden 
frost after six a.m., the thermometer registering 6° below freezing 
point; the White Dead Nettle and Hawkweed out in bloom, the lark 
warbling, sparrows pairing, and nature generally seems to have been 
called up very early.—F. Enock. 
“ Mental Evolution in Animals ” is the title of the long-expected 
work by Mr. G. J. Romanes, in which he applies the data that he 
collected in his “Animal Intelligence” to trace the course by which 
mind has been evolved in animals. He found the field on which he 
had entered so wide that he was compelled to relinquish his first 
design, and hence the mental evolution of man is excluded from the 
present work, and will form the subject of a later treatise. The 
subject of instinct is treated at very great length in this volume 
(through nearly 200 pages), and in an appendix at the end is contained 
Mr. Darwin’s “ Essay on Instinct,” to which allusion was made in our 
last number, and which, we forgot to mention there, was originally 
written to form a part of the famous “Origin of Species,” but was 
suppressed in consequence of the merciless compression to which that 
book was subjected. 
