Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/243

The injury he had received possibly befell him in another way, of which I met an example some years later. One fine June day I was crossing, with a young friend, over the chalk downs cast of Box Hill, in Surrey, and in the middle of a small patch of enclosed land we noticed what appeared at a distance as a piece of black cloth waving in the wind. On coming closer, it turned out to be a rook pinned to the ground by one leg, which was caught and horribly mangled in a steel trap. A very pitiful sight it was. A handsome young male, in the finest condition, his plumage still retaining a little of the superficial down of his nursing days, his wings well developed, and his lustrous black eye looking up with something of the touching expression attributed to that of the dying gazelle. It was to little purpose that we forced his shattered limb from the bitter gripe of the iron. In a few minutes he would, indeed, have regained the company of his kind, whose cawing was audible far down the valley, but only to be driven from their society to die a lingering death, or, after weeks of suffering, to pine in solitude for the rest of his days.

There occurs to me only one other way to account for the strange life of these hermits, viz., that old age has crippled their energies, and, exposing them to the ill usage of their fellows—who with all their sociability are far from tender-hearted—has forced them to a lonely life. It is true that the perils to which a rook is exposed, in this thickly-inhabited country, are manifold, and there are many chances to one against his reaching old age; but the case is a possible one, and all the more so because there is a very old standing impression that the tribe to which he belongs is endowed with longevity. The ancients had a notion that the natural term of his life is nine hundred years, and in the Greek anthology occurs an appellation (κορωνεκἀβη) applied to a very aged person, which is curiously compounded of the Greek noun for "crow" and the proper name Hecuba, who, being the mother of a very numerous offspring, must needs have been a tolerably old woman. Hence the meaning is, "as old as a crow and Hecuba." I commend the subject to any of your readers who, being more happily circumstanced than I am, have the liberty of ranging with a gun over lonely moors. I doubt not they will soon meet with one of these anchorites, and determine a question which I can only guess at.H.

The common house-fly carries about with it two insects of a parasitic nature (figs. 1 & 2 enlarged). No. 2 is the smallest and the most common; sometimes three of them and more will be found on one fly but I have not found more than two of the largest (No. 1); indeed it was only this summer that I knew that they were the prey of the latter, and had seen the smallest some years ago; neither have I found both kinds on the same fly. Some of your readers may have seen them, and will perhaps favour us with further information concerning them.

No. 1 is extremely like Tenebrio molitor, the beetle of the mealworm; both are of a red-brown colour. The question suggests itself, whether flies do not carry about and deposit larvæ and small beetles of

various kinds, an office for which they are admirably adapted from their erratic character. Nobody can tell what sort of places and company they do not visit in their wanderings, and I cannot help thinking various small insects attach themselves to them and are quickly conveyed to places more congenial to certain periods of their being. And this idea is favoured when the object of the pincer-like appendages of No. 1 is sought. What can they be for, but to furnish a means of attaching itself to some larger insect with more extensive powers of locomotion, and thus being transported to the next stage of its life? Queer-looking insects are always turning up in unexpected places, and I have no doubt many of them are dropped by the flies! It is probable that by this means many of these "odds and ends" and their way into the human stomach, and produce various disorders in the skin.—G. Bailey.