Science from an easy chair : a second series / by Sir Ray Lankester.

  • Ray Lankester
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Science from an easy chair : a second series / by Sir Ray Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    FERTILISATION OF SAGE You are rarely given trout to eat here in the hotels. A lake fish, called “ ferras,” a large species of the salmonid genus Coregonus, to which the skelly, powan, and vendayce of British lakes belong, is the commonest fish of the table d'hote, and not very good. A better one is the perch-pike or zander. It is common in all the larger shallow lakes of Central Europe, and abounds in the “ broads ” which extend from Potsdam to Hamburg, though it is unknown in the British Isles. It is quite the best of the European fresh-water fish for the table, and there should be no difficulty about introducing it into the Norfolk Broads. It would be worth an effort on the part of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries to do so, as the perch-pike, unlike other fresh-water fishes, would hold its own on the market against haddock, brill, and plaice. Another interesting fresh-water fish which grows to a large size in the Lake of Geneva (where I have seen it netted) is the burbot—called “ lote ” in French—a true cod of fresh-water habit which, though common through¬ out Europe and Northern Asia, is, in our country, only taken in a few rivers opening on the east coast. It is a brilliantly coloured fish, orange-brown, mottled with black, and is very good eating. Passing up the Lauterbrunnen valley, I came upon some wild raspberries and quantities of the fine, large-flowered sage, Salvia glutinosa, with its yellow flowers, in shape like those of the dead-nettle, but much bigger. They were being visited by humble-bees, and I was able to see the effective mechanism at work by which the bee’s body is dusted with the pollen of the flower. I have illustrated this in some drawings (Fig. i) which are accompanied by a detailed explanation. Two long stamens, a1, arch high up over the lip of the flower, li, on which the bee alights, and are protected by a keel or hood of the corolla. Each stamen is provided with a broad process, a2, standing
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