NEW PLANTS. - In my botanical rambles this last May two new plants came under my own observation. One of them which we have made known as Viola erecta, was found near Williamstown, Mass., and is a variety of V. Selkirkii, differing from that species in its larger size and in its leaves being strictly erect and not lying flat upon the ground. The other which was discovered at Binghamton, N. Y., and called by us Geranium album, has a white flower with yellow anthers and leaves, but little hirsute, characteristics which mark it as a distinct variety of G. maculatum.-H. M. MYERS, Williamstown, Mass.

PALMS OF THE SANDWICH ISLANDS. — In the interesting popular account of palms, contributed by Dr. Seemann to the "Gardener's Chronicle," it is mentioned that three species of Pritchardia are known from these islands, namely, P. Martii and P. Gaudichaudii (briefly noticed by Martius under the name of Livistonia, from very imperfect materials furnished by Gaudichaud)," and an undescribed species enumerated by Horace Mann." It is farther noted that none of these species are yet introduced into cultivation. There is, however, no evidence to show that the palm noticed by the late Mr. Mann is different from one or the other, not to say both, of Gaudichaud's; and it is here well known that Mr. Mann brought a stock of seed of his palm, from which numerous young plants were raised both in this country and at Kew. Of these the best developed specimen known belongs to the collection of H. H. Hunnewell, of Wellesley, Mass.

THE IRRITABILITY OF THE STAMENS IN THE BARBERRY, according to Jourdain ("Comptes Rendus" April 25th), is suspended by chloroform. A bit of cotton sprinkled with chloroform, and introduced into the glass bell-glass which covered the plant operated on, produced tetanic rigidity of the filaments in one minute; but exposure to the air soon restored the irritability, unless the action of the chloroform had been continued ten or twelve minutes, in which case the vitality of the flowers was greatly impaired or destroyed. - Academy.

ZOOLOGY.

THE FUTURE OF NATURAL SCIENCE. - We had heard it stated that henceforth physical discovery would be made solely by the aid of mathematics; that we had our data, and need only to work deductively. Statements of a similar character crop out from time to time in our day. They arise from an imperfect acquaintance with the nature, present condition, and prospective vastness of the field of physical inquiry. The upshot of natural science will doubtless be to bring all physical phenomena under the dominion of mechanical laws; to give them, in other words, mathematical expression. But our approach to this result is asymtotic; and for ages to come-possibly for all the ages of the human race— nature will find room for both the philosophical experimenter and the mathematician. - Tyndall's notice of the "Life and Letters of Faraday” in the

Academy.

THE PIGEON HAWK.—Mr. Samuels, in his work on the "Ornithology and Oology of New England," says that he never saw a nest of this bird, and never heard of but one instance of its being found in New England, but he adds that it doubtless breeds here. This may be true, but it seems to me almost as though he really could not have inquired into the matter, for in this very town (Amherst, Mass.), I know of three positive instances of the nest being found; they all were in holes of trees; in two there were four eggs, and in the other five; the last mentioned one was discovered this year; there can be no doubt as to the identity of the eggs, so I do not hesitate to show this fact. The bird seems to be comparatively common here. It seems to me as if this bird is so often here, and found to breed here, it must be that some other town or state in New England receives its due share of attention.-WINFRID STEARNS, Amherst, Mass.

THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS AND INSECTS.-M. Marey has recently shown that birds and insects fly in a totally different manner. In birds the extremity of the wing describes a simple helix, while in insects it passes through a series of lemniscs (lemniscates, or figures of eight). The author has studied this intricate subject by means of two very ingenious machines, one of which, by a very simple arrangement, indicates very precisely the flight of an insect; while the other made to be placed on the back of a bird, transmits all the movements of the wing to a receiver which faithfully records them. - Cosmos.

PÆDOGENESIS IN THE STYLOPIDÆ. - Professor von Siebold has dis covered that the so-called female of Xenos is in reality a larva, and that it produces its young by germ balls like those of the larva of Cecidomyia (Miastor) which produces larvæ like itself during the winter months, but in summer undergoes the usual transformations of these gall flies. This child-reproduction, in individuals without true ovaries, was aptly termed by Von Baer "Pædogenesis."-Siebold and Kölliker's Journal of Scientific Zoology.

CURIOUS CONDUCT OF A SHARP-SHINNED HAWK.- On the 6th of April, while wandering along the Shabbaconk Creek, near Trenton, N. J., I sat down on a convenient mat of dead grass to observe the movements of the "red-fins" (Hypsilepis cornutus), swimming in the clear waters before me, and to note also, the movements and colors of some "darters" (Hololepis erochrous Cope) that I had caught and bottled. While thus engaged my attention was called to the great tameness of a small hawk (Accipiter fuscus). It had evidently been visiting the grass, on which I was now sitting, gathering from it materials for lining a nest which I soon discovered near the top of a high beech tree, not fifty yards distant. When the bird found that I was not disposed to move off, he skimmed away over the meadow and perched upon the fence skirting it. Presently he sailed towards me near the ground and lit by a small tuft of grass. Walking around this he scratched the ground away from the roots, and then seiz

ing the tuft with one claw, dragged the roots up, and shook off the adherent earth, very much as a man would pull and shake a radish or turnip. Not content with this the hawk now laid the grass upon the ground, combed it out with his beak, and then gathering it up in his bill, flew to the neighboring fence, and hopped along until it found a rail with a narrow crotch in the end. In this it placed the grass, so that the expanded bunch of roots should be on one side and the blades of grass on the other of the notch. When thus arranged to the bird's satisfaction, it again took up the grass in its beak, and giving it a sudden jerk broke the roots from the blades. It then flew to its nest. CHARLES C. ABBOTT,

M. D. PARTHENOGENESIS IN A WASP. Professor von Siebold has discovered that in Polistes Gallica the males are developed by parthenogenesis, from unfertilized eggs. It will be remembered that in the honey bee the drones are also developed from unfertilized eggs laid by the queen. — Siebold and Kölliker's Journal of Scientific Zoology.

Mr. S. H. Scudder has published

LIST OF NEW ENGLAND LEPIDOPTERA. a very valuable and complete list of the butterflies found in New England. I propose to prepare for publication a similar list of the larger Heterocera (Sphingide to Phalanidæ inclusive). Any information relating to the times of the appearance of the imagines, or to the food plants of the larva, would be particularly acceptable. Notices, also, of the captures of rare moths or those not strictly part of the New England fauna, and lists of the species taken in any one locality, would afford most important assistance. It would be a great convenience if any one wishing to aid me would communicate any facts to me as early as possible. - CHARLES S. MINOT, 39 Court Street, Boston.

IMPROVING INTELLIGENCE IN BIRDS AND INSECTS.-M. Pouchet, the Director of the Museum at Rouen, and a well known naturalist, "has discovered that the new school of swallows are improving their style of architecture, building their nests with more regard to sanitary principles, so as to contain more room and admit more light and air. The shape of the nest is, we infer, more nearly that which will include a maximum of inhabitable space; and, besides this, and still more important, the entrance to it has been changed from a small round hole into a long slit, a sort of balcony, from which the young swallow may look out upon the world and breathe fresh air. What is more, the new school of swallow architects appear to prefer the new streets, while the old school still build the old nests on the cathedrals and older houses; perhaps from some sense of artistic fitness, which scruples at any change of style in adding extensions to monuments so venerable. If this last fact could be satisfactorily established it would furnish a complete answer to the Darwinian theory, so far as it dispenses with intellectual motives for animal progress, and would show a curious amount of æsthetic culture. No doubt migrating birds are of all others least likely to be the slaves of

local prejudices. As the travelled cuckoo was the first to conceive the idea of putting her children out to school among strangers, so the swallow, no doubt, has learned in the south, where air and prospect and space are best appreciated, to adopt the verandah principle, there so universal. Both bees and birds have now been shown to have made great strides in architectural knowledge." "London Spectator," April 16, 1870, in a communication from "Pouchet" in the "Pall Mall Gazette."

A parallel instance in bees is noticed by Dr. Ogle in a very important article on the "Fertilization of Various Flowers by Insects," contributed to the April number of the "Popular Science Review." The arrangements for the cross-fertilization of the flowers of the bean and other papilionaceous plants by bees, here described by Dr. Ogle, are pretty well known, as also the fact that both humble and hive bees have the trick of evading their duty by piercing a hole in the side of the calyx of bean-flowers, so getting at the nectar by a short cut. Dr. Ogle has remarked that while some bees visit the blossom in the natural way, and in so doing take pollen from the anthers of one flower to the stigma of the next, others avail themselves of the shorter cut; but that an individual bee, visiting a succession of bean flowers, uniformly does either the one or the other. It would thus appear that the habit is not an instinct, belonging by inheritance to the whole species, but is in each case the result of individual experience. As with the same experience some bees have acquired the habit and others have not, we must admit, not only that these insects are intelligent, but that they differ from each other in their degrees of intelligence; some being slow in acquiring knowledge, others quicker. The Scarlet Runner, when the bloom is covered with gauze to keep off insects, is wholly sterile; and so indeed habitually are a good many of the uncovered blossoms. The latter is probably owing to the observed fact that most bees have learned to get at the nectary by nipping the tube. Were all bees equally clever there would be an end of scarlet runners, unless indeed either nature or artifice were to induce some modification of structure by which the tube might be protected and the bees again driven to the mouth." We think it proper to add that Dr. Ogle's interesting article is sadly marred and obscured by gross errors of the press, showing that the proofs have not been revised by the author nor by any competent proof reader.

HOW MANY LEPIDOPTERA ARE THERE IN THE WORLD? This question is thus answered by Mr. Bates in his able address to the Entomological Society: In the "Stettiner Entomologische Zeitung" I find a very readable paper by Peter Maassen, of Elberfield, on a subject which will be interesting to most entomologists. It is an attempt to compute the total number of species of Lepidopterous insects existing in nature, and is written in correction of a previous crude essay by Keferstein on the same subject. In his estimate the author takes for his basis the curious fact that in all complete lists of local Lepidopterous faunas in Europe the AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. IV.

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number of moths to butterflies is as twenty-six to one. He then gets at the probable number of butterflies in existence. by arguing from the number published, districts unexplored, and so forth, and believes the number to be not fewer than eight thousand seven hundred and forty. Unfortunately, in pursuing the calculation he forgets his datum-line of twentysix moths to one butterfly, and takes the proportion as it stands in Staudinger and Wocke's "Catalogue of European Species," where the proportion of course is much less, because the smaller moths have not been so exhaustively collected throughout Europe as the butterflies. In this way he arrives at the total number existing in the world as one hundred and twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and forty- a surprising amount, but still far below the truth if the proportion found in well-worked districts in Western Europe is maintained throughout the world, which would produce the incredible total of two hundred and twenty-seven thousand two hundred and forty species. Scientific Opinion.

OOLOGICAL. Two years ago while down here some friends of mine took three eggs from the nest of a red bird (Cardinalis Virginianus), and put in their place a Guinea hen's egg. The old bird sat upon the latter about three weeks, and then left. In numbers of nests of this bird found in this state and in Pennsylvania, the number of eggs in the former were invariably three, and in the latter four. Can any one explain this constant difference in the number of eggs?- C. H. NAUMAN, Smyrna, Florida.

SPIKE-HORNED DEER. With regard to the question in discussion between W. J. Hays and Adirondack, whether spike-bucks ever are more than two years old, will you accept the "opinion" of one who has had some experience among deer at the other extremity of our country?

I know nothing of the Adirondack region, personally. I fancy however, it is of small extent: and I suppose it is surrounded by a settled country, peopled for a century or more by a less or greater number of skilled hunters.

Is Adirondack prepared to affirm, without a shadow of doubt, or can he prove to one tinctured with incredulity, that the region actually contains a buck five or six years old? He thinks it easy to distinguish a buck of "full age and size," though destitute of antlers, but gives no marks by which another can judge of the age. I would like to know how he would decide between a remarkably well grown buck of two years, and a runty one of three or four years, in the absence of horns. Among domestic animals may often be seen thrifty yearlings, which will outweigh starvelings of two years or more.

I have killed my hundreds of deer, perhaps — never one spike-buck that would not have been pronounced young by competent judges. I lived with an old hunter who had probably slain his thousands. I never heard him speak of an old buck with unbranched antlers. In my days of deer hunting I associated with many other men more or less acquainted with deer, from none of whom did I ever hear of an old spike-horn buck. Can