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thousands in order to record the condition of the ovaries: much Variation appears in the number of queens in a nest, of even a single species. A visit to the Kaietour Fall* was most interesting; it is some hundred and twenty miles inland from us and reached by lorry to Kangaruma, followed by an all-day trip up the River Potaro in a motor-boat. The Falls drop a sheer seven hundred and forty feet at a point where the Potaro is of the breadth of the Thames. A few yards from the falls is a govt. rest-house beside a mile-broad savannah, whereon grow over a score kinds of Bladderwort (Utricularia spp.), mostly in sand. These species, like the great majority of our collections, have not yet been adequately worked through. * T h i s Fall is said to be five times as high as Niagara ; and another has been recently discovered here t h a t is the highest in the world, with a füll half-mile's sheer drop. Guiana is Britain's sole S o u t h American possession and Sir Walter Raleigh's El-Dorado, that n o w both takes and sends us one million p o u n d s ' worth of goods annually.
ENGLISH'S INEXACTITUDE. T o THE HON. EDITOR.
My Dear Sir.—Many thanks for the Index to our Transactions, vol. iii 1935-7, safely received today.—I have been much exercised by a question which, at first sight, seems entirely puerile and yet might puzzle wiser heads than mine : Is a Winkle a ' creature' ? Apparently certain of our legislators, who sanction the present colossal expenditure upon Education, brought their wits to bear upon this matter and failed to agree. In fact I have just been told that, in a discussion upon the Fishing Industry bill, one M.P. intemperately declared the Winkle to be a Fish ; another maintained that it was an Animal; and a third, determined to be right, pronounced it a Creature. To the best of my belief it is an Amphibian ; for I have seen Winkles left on mud by the receding tide at, say, the first quarter-ebb where the water would not again reach them tili the last quarter-flood, when they would have to endure the sun's rays for some ten hours. The river Crab, too, walks over mud and makes a hole in the bank, wherein it deposits its old shell and does not leave this casting-place until its new carapace is hard enough to resist enemies' assaults : so I take it that the Crab, also, is an Amphibian. Most truly yours, Suffolk ; 17th February, 1938.
A MEMBER.
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[The question put shows, more clearly perhaps than any other could, how absolutely essential it is to classify species of all kinds by their L A T I N names (though, for this purpose, it is by no neans necessary to know what the Latin means), for you plainly here see what an endless coil we should fall into if reliance were placed alone upon their populär English names (unintelligible to foreigners, who know Latin as well or ill as Englishmen). Actually your questions concern lexicographers, rather than Naturalists, simply because they are English. Scientifically no such thing as a Winkle exists : to scientists it is the species named by Linnaeus Littorina obtusata, belonging to the group Mollusca. In English a (1) Creature is anything created, from mammoth and man to a bit of earth and the world as a whole ; though, for no very obvious reason, the expression is habitually confined to things that move, i.e. animals in contradistinction to plants and geology : so certainly a Winkle IS a creature. In English a (2) Fish is an animal that inhabits water, in which sense a Winkle IS a Fish ; but, scientifically, you well know Fish is restricted to vertebrate Pisces : so it is wrong to call a Winkle a Fish, and right to call it a (Molluscan) Shellfish. In English (3) Animal is applicable to everything living that is not a Plant; but the original animal, life or breath, has died out and is no longer scientifically used : for it would be erroneous to exclude Plants from life, as our English meaning does : so a Winkle IS an Animal. Lastly, Amphibia has also been superceded as a scientific term, for we call this group of Reptiles Batrachia (Frogs, Newts, &c.) nowadays. The combination of amphi, both, bios, life, showing these vertebrates capable of breathing in BOTH air and water by means of their possession of both lungs and gills (or respiratory organs effecting such functions), was never satisfactory because no definite line of demarcation was ascertainable. In English we continue the usage of amphibious vaguely for anything that can live (like your molluscan Winkle and your crustacean Crab, Carcinus Maenas, Penn.) for a longer or shorter period in both elements : so Winkle is an Amphibian in only the English sense.—Ed.]