HARD WICKE ' S S CIE NCE - G OS SIP. 



179 



was entirely exterminated by a band of bird-catchers, 

 more than a dozen years ago, all along that finest 

 ■tributary of the Upper Nith, the romantic and wood- 

 fringed Skarr. 



The swallow, house-martin, and sand-martin are 

 ■common — but the swift does not come. The ring- 

 ■dove is abundant, 'but I have never observed the 

 xeed-bunting. 



The following birds are very common : pheasant, 

 which has a stupid fashion of nesting on the road- 

 sides, exposed to school- children ; black-grouse, 

 partridge, lapwing, curlew, which arrive in March; 

 snipe, land-rail, which comes in the first days of May ; 

 moor-hen. The following are not uncommon ; red 

 grouse, heron, woodcock, wild duck. The black- 

 headed gull is very plentiful, but the common gull 

 less so. The teal land the little grebe or dabchick, I 

 have not observed. 



On the upper courses of our mountain streams the 

 sandpiper may be seen wading. Snow-buntings are 

 among our winter visitors. About farmyards an 

 •occasional pair of bramblings may be noticed. In 

 fields where Pninella vulgaris grows, 'may be seen in 

 ■certain seasons, flocks of twites. Our famous 

 naturalist. Dr. Grierson, lately deceased, put into his 

 museum about twenty years ago a golden oriole shot 

 mear Thornhill. 



Enough has been written to show, that although 

 Thornhill and the three adjacent glens which 

 ■converge near it are about twenty miles inland, there 

 is an interesting and well-stocked ornithological 

 •district to deal with — the chief paucity being in the 

 Slumbers of wading and swimming birds and those 

 more numerous where cereals are more abundant. 



J. Shaw. 



NOTES ON DOG'S MERCURY {MERCU- 

 RIALIS PERENNIS). 



LOOKING at the small green flowers of Mercu- 

 rialis and its general want of attractiveness, it 

 s natural at once to class it with wind-fertilized 

 plants, but on closer examination it would seem rather 

 to be on the debatable land between anemophilous 

 and entomophilous plants, nor is it clear that we are 

 right in assigning it strictly to either. This has been 

 such a late spring, especially in the north, that 

 vegetation is unusually behind-hand, and it was only 

 ■on the last day of March that the first specimens of 

 the pistillate flowers of Mercurialis put in an appear- 

 ance. The long spikes of staminate flowers were 

 fairly plentiful previous to that date, but the buds had 

 not opened. The leaves of this modest little plant 

 are not unlike those of the elder, some unbotanical 

 folks indeed call it "ground elder." We welcome 

 its coming less for its own sake, perhaps, than as 

 being the forerunner of the primrose and oxalis and 

 all the earlier spring flowers. It comes up, too, in a 



business-like manner that is somewhat amusing, for 

 though one of the earliest flowers of the year, the 

 dog's mercury pushes its way out of the ground all 

 ready equipped for the battle of life, as if there were 

 no time to lose, and eager either to scatter its pollen 

 upon the spring breezes, or to display its humble 

 attractions before the insects should be drawn away 

 hither and thither by the bright colours and sweet 

 scents of more favoured competitors for their services. 

 Underneath the loose soil of the dry banks where it 

 flourishes, the little dog's mercury developes both 

 flowers and leaves in a wonderful state of forwardness, 

 so much so that it cannot bring them up in the 

 ordinary way, or the delicate blossoms would be 

 injured, so the plant as it emerges from the ground is 

 bent almost double, leaves and flowers looking down- 

 wards, while the strong arch of the stem lifts its 

 nurslings out of their dark prison-house and then 

 gradually straightens, until at last it stands erect, 

 bearing upon its upper portion both leaves and 

 flower-spikes that only need a little sunshine and a 

 little warm rain to bring them to perfection. By the 

 way, is light always necessary for the production of 

 chlorophyll ? Mercurialis is very green when it first 

 pushes out of the soil, and there are certainly embryos, 

 like the sycamore, in which the cotyledons are green 

 before they have burst the husk. But to proceed 

 more methodically with our plant. The first question 

 to arise is that of family or tribe, and without the aid 

 of books one might not at once give the dog's 

 mercury its true place with the Euphorbiaceje, nor 

 guess from outward appearances that it was so nearly 

 allied to the brilliant Poinsettia on the one hand, or 

 the evergreen box-tree on the other, though its 

 affinities with the stinging-nettle may be more 

 apparent. Mercurialis then belongs to the Spurge 

 family, though it contains none of their acrid milky 

 juices, and is even sometimes eaten as a vegetable. 

 The rootstock is slender and creeping, and therefore 

 it enables the plant to spread widely ; indeed these 

 creeping roots give our mercury an opportunity for 

 climbing where one would scarcely expect to find it- 

 The lower part of a \Yestmorland hedge is often pro- 

 tected by an outside fence made of large square slabs 

 of the slaty rock of the country placed close together 

 with their bases buried in the soil. The chinks are 

 sometimes filled up with the loose earth of the bank, 

 and the dog's mercury loves to take possession of 

 them by means of its creeping rootstock, mounting 

 continually higher and higher, and bordering the 

 slates with greenness. The stem is solitary and erect, 

 about six to eighteen inches high, frequently bent at 

 the bottom, and the leaves are crowded towards the 

 summit ; the whole plant is more or less hairy. The 

 leaves are opposite, very shortly stalked, ovate-lan- 

 ceolate with crenate edges. In the bud each half of 

 the leaf is rolled up towards the midrib and it is long 

 before the lower part fully uncurls ; the stipules are 

 very small. The stem is sometimes described as 



