Archil or orchil is a red, violet, or purple colouring matter obtained from various kinds of lichens, the most important of which are the Roccella tinctoria and the Roccella fuciformis, natives of the rocks of the Canary and Cape Verde islands, Mozambique and Zanzibar, South America, etc, and popularly called dyer's-moss. The dye was used for improving the tints of other dyes, as from its want of permanence it could not be employed alone. The aniline colours largely superseded it. Cudbear and litmus are of similar origin. Research Archil
Bog is the name given to a piece of wet, soft, and spongy ground, where the soil is composed mainly of decaying and decayed vegetable matter. Such ground is valueless for agriculture until reclaimed, but often yields abundance of peat for fuel.
A bog seems usually to be formed as follows: A shallow pool induces the formation of aquatic plants, which gradually creep in from the borders to the deeper centre. Mud accumulates round their roots and stalks, and a semi-fluid mass is formed, well suited for the growth of moss, particularly Sphagnum, which now begins to luxuriate, continually absorbing water, and shooting out new plants above as the old decay beneath; these are consequently rotted, and compressed into a solid substance, gradually replacing the water by a mass of vegetable matter. A layer of clay, frequently found over gravel, assists the formation of bog by its power of retaining moisture. When the subsoil is very retentive, and the quantity of water becomes excessive, the superincumbent peat sometimes bursts forth and floats over adjacent lands.
Bogs are generally divided into two classes: red bogs, or peat-mosses, and black bogs, or mountain mosses. The former class are found in extensive plains frequently running through several counties, such as the Chatmoss in Lancashire, and the Bog of Alien in Ireland, the depth varying from 3.6 to 13 metres. Their texture is light and full of filaments, and is formed by the slow decay of mosses and plants of different kinds. The lower parts, being more entirely decayed, approach nearer to the nature of the humus than the upper portion, and, as being more carbonaceous, are more valuable for fuel. Black bog is formed by a more rapid decomposition of plants. It is heavier and more homogeneous in quality, but is usually found in limited and detached portions, and at high elevations where its reclamation is difficult.
In Ireland bogs frequently rest on a calcareous subsoil, which is of great value in reclaiming them. In the reclamation of bog land a permanent system of drainage must be established; the loose and spongy soil must be mixed with a sufficient quantity of mineral matter to give firmness to its texture and fertilize its superabundant humus; proper manures must be provided to facilitate the extraction of nutriment from the new soil, and a rotation of crops adopted suitable for bringing it into permanent condition. The materials best adapted for reclaiming peat are calcareousearths, limestonegravel, shell-marl, and shell-sand. Thoroughly reclaimed bogs are not liable to revert to their former condition. Trunks of trees are often found in bogs as are also bones of extinct animals. Research Bog
Amara is a genus of beetles of the ground beetle family, Carabidae, with some 35 species living in Britain. They vary in shape, but the majority of species have an elongate or compactly oval body. They vary in size from 4 to 15 mm and may be black or brown in colour, often with a metallic sheen. Generally they live in dry localities, hiding under stones, moss and between grass roots living on a mixed diet of insect larvae and vegetable matter. Research Amara
The beaver (Castor) is the only genus of the family Castoridae. The family contains a single genus, Castor, with two species: Castor canadensis, found in the New World, and Castor fibre, found in the Old World. Both species are semi-aquatic rodents noted for the building of dams. The two species differ chiefly in the shape of the nasal bones and are so much alike that some authorities consider them to be varieties of the same species. They are large rodents; the average adult beaver weighs about 16 kg, but specimens as heavy as 40 kg have been found, and some extinct beavers were almost bear- like in size. The beaver is usually about 76 centimetres long and stands less than 30 centimetres high, with a broad, flat, scaly tail about 25 centimetres long.
The body is plump, the back arched, the neck thick, the hind feet webbed, and all the digits clawed. The fur is usually reddish- brown above and lighter or greyish below. The eyes are small and the nostrils closable. The skull is massive, with marked ridges for fixing the muscles that work the jaws. The two front teeth on either jaw are like those of other rodents, wearing away more rapidly behind so as to leave a sharp, enamelled chisel edge. With these the beaver can cut down large trees. It usually selects trees five to 20 centimetres in diameter, but it can fell trees with diameters as large as 76 cm.
Beavers have a pair of anal scent glands, called castors, that secrete a musk-like substance called castoreum, probably for marking territories. The animals tend to be monogamous and have a life span of 20 years or more. The female has one litter a year, usually of two to four young.
Beavers are social animals and in areas where food is abundant and the locality secluded, the number of families in a beaver community can be rather large. The so-called beaver lodge is a unique structure. Three distinct kinds exist, their differences depending on whether they are built on islands, on the banks of ponds, or on the shores of lakes. The island lodge consists of a central chamber, with its floor a little above the level of the water, and with two entrances. One of these, the 'wood entrance', is a straight incline rising from the water, opening into the floor of the hut. The other approach, the 'beaver entrance', is more abrupt in its descent to the water.
The lodge itself is an oven-shaped house of sticks, grass, and moss, woven together and plastered with mud. The room inside is carpeted with bark, grass, and wood chips, sometimes with special store rooms adjoining. The pond lodge is built either a short way back from the edge of the bank, or partly hanging over it, with the front wall built up from the bottom of the pond. The lakelodge is built on the shelving shores of lakes. Dams are used by beavers to widen the area and increase the depth of water around their homes and are constructed either of sticks and poles or more firmly and solidly of mud, brushwood, and stones. As time goes by the beaver repairs and adds to the dam. Floating material lodges there, and vegetation growing on the top adds its roots to the strength of the dam. Frequently the beaver builds a smaller dam downstream in order to back up some water against the original dam and thus decrease the pressure of water on it from the other side. The dams are about 1.5 metres high, usually more than three metres wide at the base, and narrow at the top. A beaver dam more than 300 metres long was found in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.
Beaver ponds eventually fill with sediment, and the animals move to a new location. The abandoned area becomes good meadowland. Beaver dams also help control runoff. Although the beaver is a powerful swimmer, it has difficulty dragging over the ground the logs and branches it needs for building and for food. Colonies of beavers therefore often dig canals from the pond to a grove of trees. Such canals are up to one metre wide and deep and often a few hundred metres long. The timber is then readily floated down the canal toward the pond.
Beavers have long been exploited for their fur, and for many years during the 18th and 19th centuries hundreds of thousands of beaver skins were exported to Europe from North America annually. The animals were also sometimes destroyed because of the damage they did to forests and the flooding occasionally caused by dams. Ceaseless slaughter led to near extinction of beavers in both Europe and North America. The beaver is almost extinct in Europe, but is becoming re-established in Canada and in protected areas of the USA. Research Beaver
The bee is a four winged stinging insect of the order Hymenoptera. Bees form the super-family Apoidea of the sub-order Apocrita.
The most important member of the family is the common hive or honey bee (Apis mellifica). It belongs to the warmer parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, but is now naturalized in the Western. A hive commonly consists of one mother or queen, from 600 to 800 males or drones, and from 15,000 to 20,000 working bees, formerly termed neuters, but now known to be imperfectly-developed females. The last-mentioned, the smallest, have twelve joints to their antennae, and six abdominal rings, and are provided with a sting; there is, on the outside of the hind-legs, a smooth hollow, edged with hairs, called the basket, in which the kneaded pollen or bee-bread, the food of the larvae, is stored for transit.
The queen has the same characteristics, but is of larger size, especially in the abdomen; she has also a sting. The males, or drones, differ from both the preceding by having thirteen joints to the antennae; a rounded head, with larger eyes, elongated and united at the summit; and no stings. According to Huber the working-bees are themselves divisible into two classes: one, the cirieres, devoted to the collection of provisions, etc; the other, smaller and more delicate, employed exclusively within the hive in rearing the young.
The mouth of the bee is adapted for both masticatory and suctorial purposes, the honey being conveyed thence to the anterior stomach or crop, communicating with a second stomach in which alone a digestive process can be traced. The queen, whose sole office is to propagate the species, has two large ovaries, consisting of a great number of small cavities, each containing sixteen or seventeen eggs. The inferior half-circles, except the first and last, on the abdomen of working-bees, have each on their inner surface two cavities, where the wax, secreted by the bee from its saccharine food, is formed in layers, and comes out from between the abdominal rings.
Respiration takes place by means of air-tubes which branch out to all parts of the body, the bee being exceedingly sensitive to an impure atmosphere. Of the organs of sense the most important are the antennae, deprivation of these resulting in a species of derangement. The majority of entomologists regard their function as in the first place auditory, but they are exceedingly ssensitive to tactual impressions, and are apparently the principal means of mutual communication.
Bees undergo perfect metamorphosis, the young appearing first as larvae, then changing to pupae, from which the imagosor perfect insects spring. Whether the offspring are to be female or male is said to be dependent upon the contact or absence of contact of the egg with the impregnating fluid received from the male and stored in a special sac communicating with the oviduct, unfertilized eggs producing males. The further question whether the offspring shall be queens or workers is resolved by the influence of environment upon function. The enlargement of a cell to the size of a royal chamber and the nourishment of its inmate with a special kind of food appear to be sufficient to transform an ordinary working-bee larva into a fully-developed female or queen-bee.
The season of fecundation occurs about the beginning of summer, and the laying begins immediately afterwards, and continues until autumn; in the spring as many as 12,000 eggs may be laid in twenty-four days. Those laid at the commencement of fine weather all belong to the working sort, and hatch at the end of four days. The larvae acquire their perfect state in about twelve days, and the cells are then immediately fitted up for the reception of new eggs. The eggs for producing males are laid two months later, and those for the females immediately afterwards. This succession of generations forms so many distinct communities, which, when increased beyond a certain degree, leave the parent hive to found a new colony elsewhere. Thus three or four swarms sometimes leave a hive in a season. A good swarm is said to weigh at least three kilograms. Besides the common bee (Apis mellifica) there are the Apis fasciata, domesticated in Egypt, the Apis Ugustica, or Ligurian bee of Italy and Greece, introduced into England, etc.
The humble-bees, or bumble-bees, of which about forty species are found in Britain and over sixty in North America, belong to the genus Bombus, which is almost worldwide in its distribution. Of these species solitary females which have survived the winter commence constructing small nests when the weather begins to be warm enough; some of them going deep into the earth in dry banks, others preferring heaps of stone or gravel, and others choosing always some bed of dry moss. In the nest the bee collects a mass of pollen and in this lays some eggs. The cells in these nests are not the work of the old bee, but are formed by the young insects similarly to the cocoons of silk-worms; and when the perfect insect is released from them by the old bee, which gnaws off their tops, they are employed as honey-cups.
The humble-bees, however, do not store honey for the winter, those which survive until the cold weather leaving the nest and penetrating the earth, or taking up some other sheltered position, and remaining there until the spring. The first brood consists of workers, and successive broods are produced during the summer. The experiment of domesticating different kinds of wild bees has been tried with no satisfactory results. Some bees, from their manner of nesting, are known as 'mason bees,' 'carpenter bees,' and 'upholsterer bees.' Some of these bees (genus Osmia) cement particles of sand or gravel together with a viscid substance in forming their nests; others make burrows in wood. The leaf-cutter or upholsterer bee (genus Megachile) lines its burrow with bits of leaf cut out in regular shapes. Research Bee
Byrrhidae is the Pill Beetles family of insects of the order Coleoptera. They have oval or rounded, convex bodies and in many cases the appendages can be completely withdrawn for protection against predators. The larvae live mostly on the ground feeding on moss roots. Research Byrrhidae
Calathus is a genus of beetles of the ground beetle family, Carabidae. Some seven species are found in Britain all with a similar elongate oval form. They hide by day under leaves, moss, stones or between grass roots and come out at night to hunt. Research Calathus
Carrageen (Irish Moss) is a common British seaweed (Chondrus crispus). It is a very variable weed, with a flat branching frond usually of a deep purple-brown colour. When dried and boiled it becomes whitish in colour and yields a jelly used in food and medicine. Research Carrageen
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Archil
