Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/294

Indeed scarcely a nettle has yet been found growing to a sufficient size which does not yield an excellent fibre for spinning or rope-making.

Returning again to our common species, we learn that the roots have not only been used in domestic medicine, but that when boiled with alum, a colouring matter is developed, which has been employed to dye yarn yellow. The young shoots, when boiled, are by no means to be despised as greens. In Manchester, and some other parts of Lancashire and the North, "nettle beer" is as well known and appreciated as "ginger-pop." Fowls are said to be fond of picking up the seeds and eating them, and if the whole plant is cut down and given to cows as food, it is declared to increase the quantity and improve the quality of their milk; and if strongly salted, this same much-abused plant may be used as a substitute for rennet in making cheese. So that were we to try our best, we could hardly meet with a more useful plant than the nettle, not a fragment of which need be wasted, but all may be applied to some economic purpose. Not only is this true of one species, but also of the majority, although they offer no attractions of sweet odours, bright colours, or handsome flowers, they are, in spite of their stings, good servants to man who abuses them.

Some months ago, a person brought me a green baize cushion, with a request to know what certain objects, scattered in considerable numbers over it, were. They were white, small, and oval, and in appearance resembled minute pearls. Upon telling him that probably the cat had made her bed on that cushion for some time past, and those objects were simply the eggs of the cat-flea, he admitted the accuracy of the first of these guesses, and in his disgust nearly dropped the cushion.

This circumstance, however, appeared to me to be likely to afford the means of verifying the interesting

and instructive remarks made by Mr. R. Beck, at the Microscopical Society, in October, 1864, so I quickly caught the pad, and transferred the whole of the eggs to a sheet of paper. Together with the eggs, which were very numerous, was a quantity of black powder. This, according to Mr. Beck, is the excrement of the flea; and I see no reason to doubt the truth of it.

The eggs, in total amounting to I suppose about a thousand, were variously distributed. The two friends to whom I gave a considerable quantity each, were not successful in the experiment. The writer enclosed some in glass cells at once, and they hatched in about a week afterwards. A larger number were put into a small bottle, and carried in the pocket for a few hours. This novel sort of incubation was very successful. At night, about eight hours after

putting them into the bottle, there was a wriggling mass of larvæ, the greater part of them having liberated themselves from the egg already. In many eggs, though, the larvæ might still be seen, and careful watching showed that they shifted their positions inside.

The exit of many individuals from the shell was also observed. Once out of confinement, their appetites seemed to come simultaneously with their liberty, and they fell to on the food I had prepared for them, the black powder aforesaid, which consists of blood, only partly digested.

Thinking that as heat had so far hastened the result, it might judiciously be applied to still further accelerate the process, means were taken to warm the cell containing the few specimens which had been separated from the rest; but, unfortu-