In Touch With Nature

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 7, 19 December 1925, Page 9

In Touch With Nature

(By

J. DRUMMOND.

F.L.S., F.Z.S.)

Nature notes will appear in the “Tribune,” every Saturday. Mr. Drummond will be pleased to receive from our readers, notes relating to any remarkable incident or peculiarity they may have noticed in bird, animal, or plant life, and he will also be pleased to answer questions. Letters should be addressed to him personally, care of Tribune Office, Hastings. A LINK IN ZOOLOGY. (By J. Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S. ) Rew Zealand’s tuatara, the most generalised of living reptiles, with its closest ally entombed in rocks of the Jurassic Period, is the most famous anachronism in the annals of zoology, but there is at least one parallel in lower orders in the animal kingdom. This, like the tuatara, is found in NewZealand, but unlike the tuatara, it is not the exclusive possession of this Dominion. It is an aberrant member of an important group that includes the insects, the crabs, crayfishes, shrimps, wood-lice and barnacles, the spiders, scorpions and mites, and the centipedes and millipedes. In impor tant features of its organisation it differs from them all, and it is a kind of bridge between them and a still lower group, the worms.

This strange creature, which at first puzzled zoologists and has always interested them, is brought to mind by two individuals sent in spirits by Mr R. H. Dunn, Kaitaia, who has ample excuse for not knowing it, as it is rare as well ns strange. “1 have, off and on, spent some twenty years in the New Zealand bush, and never before found anything like them,” he writgs: “1 have shown them to several old hands and to Maoris, none of whom, apparently had seen them. They must be fairly rare in the north. They may be more plentiful elsewhere, but J thought that I would send them along to make sure. They apparently live in any rotten timber in the bush.”

The individuals are about -only an inch and a half long; in spirits they are blue-black on top, slaty blue beneath. They have fourteen pairs of stumpy, be-pimpled legs, each equipped with a pair of very small horny claws. The legs and the feet have given this creature the only name it possesses. Peripatus, which lias the same meaning as peripatetic, namely, walking about. Its superficial resemblance to a darkcoloured, unornamental easily lead to its being passed by unnoticed. Only a close inspection, partly through a lens, discloses its remarkable beauties. The upper surface of its body is traced by an elaborate mottled pattern of red, brown and green tints. The waving antennae are made up of short rings which bear minute spines. Each of the two jaws has two curved cycle-shaped, sharply-pointed plates. The heart, an elongated tube, runs through almost the length of the body. From a pair of large slimeglands, opening near the head, the Peripafus, when irritated, shows its annoyance by ejecting fine sticky threads, apparently for defence. From the brain, two nerve cords run parallel through the body. New Zealand’s species lays comparatively large, yolky eggs, but species in other countries are viviparous. All belong to the land, not to the w’ater, and all live in damp places, under bark, dead timber, or stones. Australia, South America, South Africa, Malaya and New Britain and other countries, as well as New Zealand, possess this primitive link in the zoological chain.

REMARKABLE FUNGI. An interesting little fungus, collected near Christchurch, is described by Mr J. B. Armstrong. It belongs*to a and beautiful group, known as the birds’-nest fungi, fairly common near Christchurch, and bears the popular title of pea-shooter and the official title of Sphaerobolus. It has a white or brown cup-like body. This contains from six to twelve eggs, which arc the peridiales that contain the spores, or reproductive bodies, but in the pea-shooter the peridiales are very much smaller than in the true bird’s-nests, and each cup contains only one egg.

The pea-shooter grows on rotten wood, through which the spawn runs, and it produces the cups in fairly large numbers. Each cup is double; the outer one is pale yellow and the inner one is white. When the pea-shooter is fully matured, the outer coat is thrown off, and the inner one is _ suddenly inverted, the egg being ejected, with some force, to a distance of from one inch to five inches. Some writers on the European form of the peashooter state that this mechanical jacit is accompanied by a noise, but Mr Armstrong has not been able to confirm this statement by observations of the New Zealand pea-shooter. Although Sphaerobolus is found in Europe and America, Mr Armstrong is doubtful if the New Zealand plant is quite the same as the on§ in those countries. European authors describe their form as stellate—starlikc—but Mr Armstrong states that there is nothing stellate about New Zealand’s form. 'Pho whole plant, apart from the creeping spawn, is only about the size of a cabbage-seed.

BIRDS IN TARANAKI. “Just a low notes in connection with the splendid record of the shin ing cuckoo’s arrival in New Zealan.d last September anu Mr W. Smith wrote from New Plymouth on December 5. ‘ ‘ Lovers of natives birds in Taranaki have spoken to me in appreciation of your correspondents ’ efforts in supplying the long list of dates. It seems to me that the shining cuckoo is less plentiful in this district now that it was formerly. Once *1 week at least, I go to a large bush reserve, where native birds are plentiful. In spite of a very wet and unusually chilly winter in Taranaki, they have nested well, although they were from three weeks to a month later in their mating. I have found only one young sining cuckoo in a grey warb ler’s nest this season.” RED CLOVER FERTILISATION. Mr Smith joins other correspondents in disagreeing with Mr W. L. C. Wil liams‘ opinion that “Charles Darwin wrote a lot of nonsense about the humble-bee” in respect to the fertilisation of the red clover. To account for Mr Williams obtaining quantities of the seed of red clover several years; before the humble-bee was introduced ' into New Zealand, Mr Smith offers the explanation that fertilisation in that case was effected by honey bees. Each closely-aggregated head of red clover, Mr Smith states, is composed of, on an average, 140 florefs. The length of the staminal tube in each floret varies greatly according to the jizc and i -jbu* -- !. .. of '.! ■? flower head '

Each tube contains the stamens and the pistil. In the case of florets with the shorter tubes, honey bees—the English and the Ligurian—can reach the small honey receptacles and fertilise the flowers. Another phase of this interesting question is dealt with by Mr »Smith, one that has not received much attention, probably because the insects concerned have not received the splendid advertisement Darwin gave the humble-bee. Mr Smith records the fact that in New Zealand, from sixty to thirty years ago, many species jef* diurnal and nocturnal moths, partieu larly of the genus Melanchra, helped to fertilise the red clover. Agricultural settlment has destroyed the plantfood of the caterpillars of some moths, which have become rare but from forty to twenty years ago, when reu clover was extensively grown in the South Island for export, Mr Smith was able almost daily to observe diurnal moths of the Melanchra genus visting and fertilising the clover flowers. He concludes: “We know that not until after the arrival of the humble-bee could rod clover seed be produced in New Zealand in exportable quantities. Warwin had a patch of red clover in his garden, which enabled him to observe accurately the habits of humblebees. 1 never before heard the great, scientist accused of writing a lot cf nonsense.” TWO CHARMING SONGSTERS. A correspondent who writes from Cobydalc, West port, and who signs his letter “Hirondelle,” describes the tui as tlie alarm-clock of the bush. He has heard tuis sing at 3 a.m., when the stars were still at the height if their brilliance, and a tui’s note is the last he has heard in the evening, even when there was rain and" fog. Hr- often has heard a morepork owl hoot long before the tuis have completed thqir vespers. For cheeriness and for friendship to the lonely worker in the bush, he divides the honours between the tui and the bellbird, which he gives its bush title, “mako-mako.” He suggests that anybody who wishes to hear these two songsters at their best in the South Island should visit the Mokihinui Gorge or the Karamca road West Coast, during the summer vacation. He believes that the chaffinch and the blackbird can live solely in bush country; he has seen both of them at least fifteen miles from the nearest clearing, and at an altitude of 3.500 feet. The white-pine, when in berry, is a favourite food-plant of the native wood-pigeon, but this correspondent states that the starling has taken to those berries in recent years. Congegating in hundreds, starlings harass the wood-pigeons and drive them from their natural feeding-grounds. He finds that blackbirds and song-thrushes are voracious feeders on the berries of ihc native fuchsia—the konini—another tree favoured by the wood-pigeon, the tui, and the bcllbird. He also reports that imported birds use the kiekie, still another plant relied upon by some native birds, and he doubts if the berry-eating native birds, in the circumstances, will remain stationary in numbers much less increase.