Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/263

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EDITORIAL GLEANINGS.
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which occurs in several English dictionaries, such as Webster and Ogilvie, as French. Some naturalists anglicize it as warine, e.g. Goldsmith. Littré has it with a reference to Buffon, but without derivation, which is not surprising, as it is a 'ghost-word,' a misreading or typographical error for ouariue. The correct ouariue will be found in the book I have just quoted, p. 252. In modern French spelling it should, of course, be ouarive, which is then seen to be merely a French disguise for the well-known guariba, of which a good account is given by Mr. Bradley in the 'N.E.D.' Similarly, the Brazilian maniba, the stalk of manioc, is called manive by the old French voyagers, e.g. by Bellin, 'Description de la Guiane,' 1763, p. 56."


Mice, as is generally known, will devour lepidopterous pupæ, but that they will also indulge in larvæ is the subject of a communication by Mr. Carleton Rea to the last issue of 'Science Gossip.' The curator of the Hastings Museum, Victoria Institute, Worcester, had secured last May over fifty larvæ of the large Emerald Moth (Geometra papilionaria). These he intended to "sleeve out" on growing trees, but delayed doing so, with the result that a Mouse or Mice broke into his collection, and destroyed the greater part of the larvæ.


The 'Entomologist' has recently reprinted the Address delivered to the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society on Jan. 14th last by Mr. E.J. Burgess Sopp. In it allusion is made to the ever decreasing area of our forest land in this country, with special reference to Delamere Forest. We read that, "on the authority of Mr. Fortescue Horner, one of H.M. present Commissioners for Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, that five and forty years ago the woodlands of Delamere extended to nearly 4000 acres, since which time 1800 have been cleared for agriculture, and 126 sold. At that period 750 acres of reclaimed land were already let out as farms, a total which at the present day has grown to 2550: so that from 1856 to the end of the century just closed the woodlands appear to have shrunk from nearly 4000 acres to but little more than half their former dimensions." This is a matter to be pondered over by all British naturalists.


Dr. A.W. Alcock has placed us all under an obligation by printing, as a separate memoir, "Zoological Gleanings from the Royal Indian Marine Survey Ship 'Investigator,'"[1] As the author remarks in an introduction, "so many of the biological observations made through the medium of the 'Investigator' are buried in reports that are not accessible, and so

  1. Simla, 1901.