39
ENGLISH'S INEXACTITUDE.
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.