Melissa officinalis, or common balm, he says, it is observable that its green leaves, which yield a muscadine red to water, give a pure and perfect green to spirit of wine, which no other plant that he had tried would yield. He infused both the leaves and flowers of plants in various menstruums, for the purpose of discovering the true combination and attraction of the constituents of their colouring matter. He observed that oil received a green from plants by infusion, but not a perfect blue, neither would spirit of wine; but water received all colours except a perfect green.

The theory of Grew was built on the supposition, that there exists a set of vessels, or, as he terms them, lymphæducts, that abound in a compound of sulphur and acid, which is favourable to the production of blues, reds, and purples; whilst another set, which he terms air-vessels, contain a subalkaline salt, that mixes with the essential oil of the vegetable, and produces a green colour. The predominance of the lymphæducts, charged with their own compound in various proportions, or in various combina tions with the air-vessels, gives, he argues, all the beautiful variety of colours exhibited in the vegetable creation.

The production of the different colours in vegetables by the predomi nance of acids or alkalies, we have found to be prettily shown by the following experiment:

Make an infusion, by pouring hot water on the dried petals of red roses (Ròsa centifolia) usually kept by druggists; it will have but little colour till a small quantity of liquor potássæ be added, when the infusion will become perfectly green; add sulphuric acid, and it will become red; and the colour may be alternately changed by the predominance of the acid or alkali. If the infusion be made of alcohol in lieu of water, it will at first be colour. less, but the result will be the same. (Maund's Botanic Garden, vol. ii. part i. No. 146.)

ART. II. Zoology.

A SOUTH AMERICAN Variety or Species of the Genus Homo. If the education of the first animal, man, be a subject suited to a Magazine of Natural History, surely occasional notices of any new species or varieties of that extensive genus Hòmo, would well comport with the design and execution of this work. Mr. Deville exhibited, a short time since, some skulls of a South American tribe of the human race, of which drawings would be desirable. It is said that this race is, or is supposed to be, extinct ; but whatever tends to elucidate the natural history of ourselves, must be preeminently useful towards the completion of our knowledge, and the correction of our judgment. — J. R.

A Spotted Child. There is now exhibiting in a travelling caravan, a fine healthy boy between two and three years old, who was born at Rochester, Kent, of healthy English parents. This child is in several parts of the body covered with considerable patches of brown hair of close texture, and soft and silky to the touch. The patches, in fact, are nothing more, so far as I could perceive by a cursory examination, than very large hairy moles or birth-marks, uncommon when occurring so large as in this instance, but otherwise by no means uncommon. Birth-marks, it may be observed, are sometimes dangerous as forming the beginnings of cancer, &c., but this does not occur, perhaps, so frequently with the hairy as with the livid sorts.— J. R.

Inferior Dexterity of the Left Hand.- M. Le Comte refers the inferior power of the left arm to the position of the foetus during the last months of gestation, the left side being usually pressed against the bones of the

pelvis, and consequently obstructing the circulation. This effect is farther increased by nurses carrying children on their right arm; and by the care taken to teach children not to use their left hands. (Journal de Physiologie Exp.)

Wolves and Foxes in Scotland. -In my antiquarian reading I have met with the following singular notice of Scottish wolves in Bellenden's Translation of Boetius, edit. Edin. 1541: -"The wolffis are right noisome to tame beastial in all parts of Scotland, except one part thereof named Glenmorris, in which the tame beastial gets little damage of wild beastial, especially of tods [foxes]; for each house nurses a young tod certain days, and mengis [mixes] the flesh thereof after it be slain with such meat [food] as they give to their fowls or other small beasts, and so many as eats of this meat are preserved two months after from any damage of tods; for tods will eat no flesh that gusts of their own kind.” — J. Rennie.

Black Sheep. According to Giraldus Cambrensis (who, though a retailer of fables, may be perhaps credited in this), the Irish in his time were chiefly clothed in black garments, because their sheep, from which the wool was furnished, were black. (Vide Topograph., and also Collectan. de Reb. Hibern., xi.) When this is compared with what Southey tells us, in his Letters from Spain, namely, that in the north of the Peninsula, the sheep are almost all of a black colour; we may, perhaps, justly conclude, that the black Irish sheep, mentioned by old Giraldus, had been originally imported from Spain at the period, it may be, of the Milesian emigration. Those who are extensively acquainted with Ireland may be able to say whether this breed of black sheep is now propagated there.— J. R.

Hands of the Whale. The breast fins of the whale, instead of being composed of straight spines like those of fishes, conceal bones and muscle formed very like those of the fore legs of land animals; but so enveloped in dense skin, that the fingers have no separate motion, though the hand (if it may be called so) is flat, very pliant, large and strong, enabling the whale to sustain the young closely compressed to its body, as was remarked by Aristotle. The gradation of the hand, as it appears in apes, &c., may be traced in the otter, seal, walrus, manati, and dugong, into the whale. (Dr. Harwood, Lect.)

The King-fisher. In the little work entitled Ornithologia, by Mr. Jennings, I find two statements respecting the common king-fisher (Alcedo I'spida), which require modification. He says that it is " rarely, if ever, found near the habitations of man." (p. 172.) On the contrary, I am in the habit of seeing king-fishers very often on the banks of a brook, which runs past my garden, not a hundred yards from the house in which I write this paragraph. A nest was found with young, last summer, on the bank of the same brook, and within gun-shot of a whole row of houses. Mr. Jennings farther states that he saw a king-fisher on the Ravensbourne, in September 1827, insinuating thereby that the bird is rare; but the brook just alluded to is a branch of the Ravensbourne, on which they are far from uncommon.-J. R.

The King-fisher, Alcedo I'spida (fig. 3. Vol. I. p. 23.) - About ten years ago, when living near St. Anstell, a small town in the west of Cornwall, I was told that a man in the neighbourhood had caught two curious birds, and that no one knew what they were; I accordingly, with all the eagerness of a boy and a naturalist, went to the man's house, and there saw two little birds sitting up like the auk (A'lca), rather than standing, on the floor of a small cage. They looked very melancholy, and stared about them in a very vacant manner. I quickly perceived that they were young king-fishers just able to fly. In reply to my enquiries the man told me that he had put a call bullfinch (Lóxia Pyrrhùla) in a cage with limed twigs on a hedge near the river. This river is a rocky stream which flows at the bottom of VOL. II.-No. 10.

H H

the town, in winter it is sometimes very much swollen, but in the summer almost dry. On visiting the cage, he found a strange bird caught, which he carried home and placed the cage as before; in a few minutes he found, to his great surprise, another bird like the former entangled. He put them together in the cage in which I saw them, and fed them with worms, bread crumbs, and hempseed; they lived only a few days, and were then thrown away. The poor little birds, by a mistake of instinct, were probably attracted to the cage by the call or even the colours of the bullfinch, which, in some degree (the piping note especially), resembled that of their parent. What renders it more remarkable is, that the king-fisher is a bird very rarely, if ever, found in those parts. J. Lakes. Liskeard Vicarage, Cornwall,

Dec. 10. 1828.

Swallows remaining in this Country during the Winter. - If a fact which I observed will be of any service to confirm the hypothesis, not assumed, but rather revived, by your correspondent, the Rev. W. T. Bree, that some kinds of swallows remain dormant during the winter in this country, it is at your service. Walking about eight o'clock on the morning of the 15th of November, at Richmond, in Yorkshire, I was surprised to see the common swallow (Hirundo rústica) flitting about near the church in one direction and another with their usual alacrity in summer; the main body of swallows had taken their departure in the early part of October; the morning was misty, but genial and warmer than usual at that time of the year. It was my intention to have communicated this, previously to the present time, in the form of an essay on the arrival and departure of the Hirundines, along with some other observations and facts which I have collated, but your very learned correspondent, the Rev. W. T. Bree, has, I see, anticipated me. Yours, L. E. O. of Beadford

Preservation of small Birds. Remove the viscera, brain, eyes, and tongue with a hooked wire; fill all the cavities with antiseptic paste, or cotton saturated with it; bind the bill and wings with thread, hang it up by the legs, pour from one to two ounces of ardent spirits into the vent, and leave it to dry in an airy place. The paste is made with 8 parts of white arsenic, 4 parts of Spanish, and 1 part of soft soap, and 3 parts of camphor, with a few drops of alcohol. — Id.

New Species of British Snake. — Mr. T. M. Simmons has discovered, near Dumfries, in Scotland, a species of snake, which seems to be new to our naturalists, and which has been appropriately called Coluber dumfrisiensis (fig. 109.) It differs from the common snake (Cóluber Nàtrix), in

109

having no ridged line on the middle of its dorsal scales, which are extremely simple and smooth. The number of scales under the tail is about 80, and the plates on the belly 162. The only specimen hitherto found measured 5 in., was of a pale colour, with pairs of reddish-brown stripes from side to side over the back, somewhat zig-zag, with intervening spots on the sides

It comes nearest in character to a species of snake, Coluber austriacus Linn., which is common in France and Germany, and which has smooth dorsal scales, like the Dumfries snake. The latter also, if the figure published by Sowerby be correct, has large scales on the head, which proves that it cannot be the young of the common viper, which, however, has also ridged scales.

J. R.

Hearing of Fish. - Independent of the story of Arion and the dolphin, we have the evidence both of modern experiment and dissection, to demonstrate the fact of the hearing of fish. The following verses, by the Bishop of Dunkeld, furnish a curious specimen of reasoning in opposition to this undoubted fact:

"Violent din the air brekis and dears, 1

Sine great motion of the water steirs, 2-
The water steirit, fishes for feardness flies,
But out of doubt no fish in water hears,
For, as we see, right few of them have ears;
And eke, forsooth, but if wise clerkis lies,
There is no air in with waters nor seas,

But whilk no thing might hear, as wise men lears, 6
Like as but light there is nothing that sees."

Gawin Douglas, Palice of Honour, i. 28.

Spiders live and grow without Food - Out of fifty spiders produced on the last day of August, and which were kept entirely without food, three lived to the 8th of February following, and even visibly increased in bulk. Was it from the effluvia arising from the dead bodies of their companions that they lived so long? Other spiders were kept in glass vessels without food from the 15th of July till the end of January. During that time they cast their skins more than once, as if they had been well fed. (Redi, Generat. Insect., p. 160.)

I enclosed a packet of spiders' eggs in a pasteboard box, which were soon hatched but afterwards forgotten and neglected for about two months, when they were all found dead but two, which had cast their skins, and increased in size, but, though I fed them with flies and gnats, they soon died.— J. R.

Cimex.-This extensive genus comprehends upwards of eight hundred species inhabiting plants as various as the shapes and hues of the insects themselves, some of which possess colours brilliant beyond description. In their larva state they are very active, and only differ from the perfect insect in wanting wings. They overrun the plants, grow, and change into chrysalides or pupæ, without appearing to undergo any material alteration. They have, indeed, only the rudiments of wings, which their last transformation unfolds, and the insect is then perfect. In their first two stages they are unable to propagate their species. In the perfect state, the fecundated female lays a great number of eggs, which are often found placed side by side upon plants. Many of these, when viewed through a magnifier, present singular varieties of conformation. Some are crowned with a row of small hairs, others have a circular fillet, and most of them have a cap, which the larva pushes off when it forces open the egg. Released from their prison, they overrun the plant, and feed on its juices. (Carpenter in Gill's Tech. and Micr. Rep.)

Swarming of Bees. - The ingenious President of the Horticultural Society, Mr. T. A. Knight, has been led from repeated observation to infer, that, in the swarming of bees, not a single labourer emigrates without previously

Injures. 2 Stirs. Unless.

inspecting its proposed future habitation, as well as the temporary stations of rest where their numbers collect soon after swarming. (Philosophical Magazine.)

The Death's-head Hawk Moth. (fig. 110). As an instance of animals following the progress of cultivation, it may be mentioned that the Death's

head hawk moth (Acheróntia A'tropos) has been found near Catrine, Ayrshire: the specimen was sent to the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. It is very doubful whether this insect, whose larvæ feed on the jasmine, the potato, and other exotics, was produced in Britain before their introduction. -J. R.

The Vapourer Moth (Bombyx antiqua).- Sir, The practice of "sembling," as it is called, i. e. exposing a female moth for the purpose of attracting the males, is well known to collectors of insects, and has often been adopted with success. In addition to the remarkable instances of the wonderful instinct by which the males are guided, recorded Vol. I. p. 332. of your Magazine, I beg to offer you the following, though by no means so interesting an example of the fact as those mentioned by your correspondent, J. H. Davies, Esq. A friend of mine once reared from the caterpillar a female specimen of Bombyx antiqua (Vapourer Moth) (fig. 111. a), which sex of the insect, it is well known, is incapable of flying, possessing, as it does, only the bare rudiments of wings. Wishing to try the experiment of sembling, and thinking this apterous female a peculiarly fit subject for the purpose, he placed it on a card, and carried it into the garden, where a male moth (6) immediately came and settled on the card

b

as he held it in his hand. The helpless female accidentally fell to the ground among herbage, so thick, that any attempt to recover the specimen would have been almost hopeless, had not the male led to the discovery by fluttering directly to the spot. A circumstance which serves to heighten the success of this experiment is, that the male thus introduced to my friend's notice, was the only specimen he saw during the autumn; Bombyx antiqua, though a common insect in most seasons, being in others scarcely to be seen. -W. T. Bree. Allesley Rectory, Nov. 13. 1828.

Death-Watches.-These little creatures, whose portentous click once made stout hearts quail, and still inflicts no small terror on many an an