Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/298

Several specimens of the Clouded Yellow Butterfly (Colias Edusa) were seen at Newby, near Annan, on the 5th October, 1865, when the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History Society met there. It has been seen several times in Dumfriesshire before, at the following places and dates:—Obtained by Dr. Gibson, on the 17th August, 1857, at Kirkmahoe,—seven were taken, and several more seen near Glancaple Quay; another taken by Dr. Gibson, in September, 1858, at Colvend; and those of this year on the 5th October, at Newby, near Annan.—C. D. M. S.

The Moa of New Zealand.—The marvellous adventures and journeys of Sindbad the Sailor have at some time or other been familiar to most of us. It would seem that his gigantic bird, the Roc, had, however, at some remote date a distant relation in the Moa or Dinornis. From time to time accounts have reached this country of the native traditions respecting this gigantic bird, now supposed, and with good reason, to be extinct. Bones of it have been found from time to time, and from them Professor Owen and other naturalists have drawn on science and imagination as to its probable size and shape. We now have a link that is a very important one in the chain of construction; and that is the arrival of an egg of this bird from New Zealand. It was discoverd by a man in the employment of Mr. Fyffe, at Kai Koras. He was digging the foundation of a house, and on the side of a small mound came upon the egg in question. It was in the hands of a skeleton Maori, and with the skeleton there were numerous tools of sharpened stone, including a spearhead, axe, &c. In digging out the egg it was slightly injured, but the pieces were preserved. It measures ten inches long, seven inches broad, and the shell is about the thickness of a shilling. It was brought over in the ship Ravenscraig, and was sold by auction by Mr. J. C. Stevens, of King Street, Covent Garden, on the 24th Nov., for £120.—Gardener's Chronicle.

A Visitation of Spiders.—On Sunday afternoon, October 15th, my attention was directed to a colony of spiders which were industriously weaving their tiny webs over the iron railing in front of my residence. On examination I found they were small, black, glistening, active, and aërial, as they floated through the air in a peculiar manner, and with apparent ease. They were all industriously engaged on the tops of the railings only, covering them with a web of the utmost delicacy. My curiosity was excited by the fact that not two or three rails only, but all the rails in front of my residence had their busy group of arachnidean workers. The number on each rail varied, some having twenty, others five spiders upon them; but on an average there were eight spiders to each rail. I extended my inspection to the rails of the neighbouring houses, and found them equally covered with spiders. I examined several streets, squares, and churches in the neighbourhood, and without exception each rail was the scene of a busy working colony. I estimated that in my own locality they covered about three miles of iron railing. I subsequently ascertained that on the same day they were equally numerous about one mile north of Newcastle, in the centre of the town, and at the extreme west end, my residence being in the northern outskirts; so that the spiders may be fairly represented as covering the entire town. A gentleman from Hexham, a town twenty miles from Newcastle, informed me that they were abundant there also. If any of your readers south or north of Newcastle saw and recorded this phenomenon, it would afford the means of ascertaining the speed at which these spiders travel. I secured a few of these spiders in a bottle, and have since mounted them in balsam as microscopical objects: four are female and one male. They do not exceed an ordinary ant in size, and are not unlike them in general appearance, although they are in the strictest sense spiders. They have four legs, with three claws on each, on each side of the thoracic cavity. They have mandibles of the most keen, strong, and piercing kind at each side of the head, and they have palpi fixed at the roots of the mandibles. Each male palpus has eight joints, and is terminated by a strong pair of pincers. There is a remarkable feature connected with the male palpi—viz., on each palpus there is a beautiful wing of considerable size; but whether the wings are intended to aid in aërostation or not I do not know; they are there, however, and similar appendages do not appear on any of the spiders which are figured in Mr. Blackwell's elaborate two-volume work on British spiders, published under the auspices of the Ray Society. The spider to which I now direct the attention of your readers was unknown in Britain when Mr Blackwell's elaborate work was issues, and they are consequently not figured there. They have only been recently noticed by Mr. Blackwell, in the "Annals of Natural Hisotry," vol. for 1863. Previous to 1863, they had not been observed in England, and then only in Denbighshire and Caernarvonshire. Now they have visited Newcastle in numbers of which it would be no exaggeration to say that there were several millions. The most striking fact, however, has yet to be related: no entomologist in this neighbourhood ever saw this species before; they all made their appearance in one day, October 15th, and since that time, although I have looked carefully for them, not a single spider of the species has ever been seen in the neighbourhood. Mr. Blackwell says that the spider is an aëronautic species, and that its name is Neriëne dentipalpis.—T. P. Barkas, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Nov. 4.