HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



207 



ZOOLOGY. 



Good Little Robin. — A little redbreast has 

 come to our door all through the winter for his 

 meals, and a most friendly welcome guest he has 

 been. One spring morning we saw robin do a deed 

 of charity that more than ever endeared the little 

 bird to our hearts. It had been a bitterly cold 

 night ; and, on our servant going down-stairs to 

 fetch some coal to light the fires, she found a poor 

 little starling shivering and frightened in the cellar. 

 She called me to see the bird; it had only just left 

 the nest, and was so weak that it could not fly. I 

 tried to coax it to eat, took it near the fire, offered 

 it bread-crumbs, seeds, water ; but no ! the starling 

 would not be tempted. Breakfast-time came, and 

 with it the little robin. We thought if we put the 

 wee birdie out of doors, its mother might come to 

 look for her lost child ; then came the fear of robin 

 —he was so very pugnacious ; well, we risked it, 

 keeping a very strict watch over the starling's 

 safety. Robin eyed it a moment and flew away ; 

 still the little baby bird stood on one leg shivering, 

 and no mother arrived. The moments seemed 

 hours. Presently robin came flying back, and with 

 something in his beak too. Hop, hop, he came to 

 where the wee baby starling was shiveriug, and 

 popped a worm in its beak, which it opened, just 

 as if robin had said " Open your mouth, here is 

 some breakfast ; " and away he flew, and again 

 returned with some food to the young bird, and 

 then they both flew away. We never saw the 

 starling again, but good little robin's deed made 

 him more loved than ever in the house. — Barbara 

 Wallace Fyfe. 



Hawk at Fault. — The following incident that 

 befell a lady friend of mine residing at Bromley, 

 Kent, may interest some of your readers. Their 

 house stands on an eminence, facing a thick copse or 

 plantation. One afternoon, as my friend was taking 

 a nap on a sofa opposite the window in a ground- 

 floor room (the window was of clear plate glass, 

 and large and high, and on the wall above the sofa 

 hung a stuffed partridge in a case), she was aroused 

 by a terrific crash on the window, and on hurrying 

 into the garden to seek the cause, found in the path 

 beneath, a fine hawk nearly stunned and much hurt. 

 It had evidently made a swoop from a great dis- 

 tance, at the partridge opposite the window, not 

 perceiving the intervening glass. The sun was 

 shining full into the room at the time. The hawk 

 managed to flutter into the next garden, and eluded 

 further search at the time, but the next clay it was 

 found dead under the bushes. It would have been 

 stuffed and preserved by the side of its intended 

 victim, but was in so crippled and damaged a con- 

 dition, from the effects of its furious collision, that it 



was deemed only tit for burial. What a moral at- 

 taches to the story, both for birds and men ! — E. C, 

 Ramsgate. 



Glow-worm Light (p. 69, 1870).— That it has 

 some end useful in the insect's economy may not be 

 doubted ; but what that end is, we are entirely ig- 

 norant. It has been concluded and taken for 

 granted, that its purpose is to direct the winged 

 male to the wingless female. But it is surely for- 

 gotten that other insects have no difficulty in find- 

 ing the males which are stationary, but that, on the 

 contrary, they possess a peculiar power of discover- 

 ing them, even when totally concealed from sight, 

 as when enclosed in boxes, and even coming down 

 chimneys and beating against windows, to obtain 

 access to them ; on which power the plan of taking 

 males called " Sembling" is founded. And, whether 

 or not, the explanation of the phenomenon would 

 not answer in the instances where both sexes are 

 winged. — P. A. Gosse, "The Canadian Naturalist'' 



Eggs. — Rambling along the shore of a small bay 

 the other day, I came upon the nest of the Ringed 

 Plover (Charadrhis Eiaticula) with four eggs. The 

 nest, if so it may be called, consisted of a large 

 mound of sand, about eight inches in height, held to- 

 gether with some ropy fucus, and the slight depression 

 on the top, in which the eggs were laid, was carefully 

 and neatly paved with small fragments of cockle- 

 shells : the nest was near high-water mark. A little 

 farther back from the sea I found, amongst some 

 thistles (Cnicus palustris), three eggs of the Oyster- 

 catcher {Tlcematopus osiralegus) laid in a slight 

 depression on the bare sand. Not far from this I 

 came to what I suppose is merely the egg of a 

 Peewit (Vanelhis cristatus) ; but the peculiarity 

 was that there was only one egg laid on a neat little 

 circle of bents and rushes, which was only large 

 enough to support this solitary egg. It was de- 

 serted, though the embryo was almost mature. In 

 swampy ground; at the head of this little bay, I have 

 found the nest and eggs of the Snipe {Scolopax 

 Gallinago) placed on a tussock amongst the marshy 

 herbage. There were four eggs, placed with their 

 small ends inwards. I once, some years ago, met 

 with the nest of the common Thrush {Tardus 

 musicus) in a curious position, namely, at the foot 

 of a small fir-tree, and quite on the ground : the 

 nest was built in the usual way, and contained five 

 eggs. This was in a wood, where there was every 

 facility for building the nest in a tree. I have also 

 discovered the nest of the Yellow - hammer 

 {Emberiza citrinella) very high up in a lofty hedge : 

 this is unusual. A pair of the Great Titmouse 

 (Parus major) have built iu an old unused pump 

 here [Almorness, N.B.] for the last ten years, and 

 maybe for longer, always bringing up two broods 

 each season, eight in number.— W. Douglas Robinson. 



