Furnished with wings, it does not remain in the nest, but is forced to return thither by the strange incapacity to feed itself. Like the _Claviger_, it repays its kind nurses by the sweet liquid it exudes, and which is retained by a tuft of hair on either side of the abdomen beneath the wings, which the creature lifts in order that the ant may get at its honeyed recompense. Such mutual services between creatures in no way allied is a most curious fact in the animal world.--_Popular Science News._ * * * * * A GEM-BEARING GRANITE VEIN IN WESTERN CONNECTICUT. By L.P. GRATACAP. In the county of Litchfield, Conn., in the midst of some of the most attractive hill country of that region, a very striking mineral fissure has been opened by Mr. S.L. Wilson, which, in both its scientific and commercial aspects, is equally important and interesting. It is a broad crevice, widened at the point of excavation into something like a pocket and filled, between its inclosing walls of gneiss, with a granitic mass whose elements have crystallized separately, so that an almost complete mineralogical separation has been effected of quartz, mica, and feldspar, while associated aggregates, as beryl and garnet, have formed under conditions that make them valuable gem fabrics. The vein has a strike south of west and north of east and a distinct dip northwest, by which it is brought below the gneiss rock, which forms an overhanging wall, on the northerly side of the granitic mass, while on the southerly edge the same gneiss rock makes an almost vertical foot wall, and exhibits a sharp surface of demarkation and contact. The rock has been worked as an open cut through short lateral "plunges," or tunnels have been used for purposes of exploration in the upper part of its extent. Its greatest width appears to be fifty-one feet, and the present exposure of its length three hundred. It undergoes compression at its upper end, and its complete extinction upon the surface of the country at that point seems probable. At its lower end at the foot of the slope wherein the whole mass appears, it reveals considerable development, and affords further opportunities for examination, and, possibly, profitable investment. It has been formed by a powerful thrust coincident with the crumpling of the entire region, whereby deeply seated beds have become liquefied, and the magma either forced outward through a longitudinal vent or brought to the surface by a process of progressive fusion as the heated complex rose through superincumbent strata dissipated by its entrance and contributing their substance to its contents. The present exposure of the vein has been produced by denudation, as the coarsely crystalline and dismembered condition of the granite, with its large individuals of garnet and beryl, and the dense, glassy texture of the latter, indicate a process of slow cooling and complete separation,