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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the clew to their method of feeding. After 

 having bored over a considerable piece of 

 ground a square foot or more they pro- 

 ceeded to execute what looked comically like 

 a war-dance upon the perforated territory. 

 They also occasionally tapped the ground 

 with the tips of their wings. My intense 

 curiosity to know the possible utility of this 

 process was at length gratified by seeing a 

 worm crawl, half-length, from one of the 

 borings, when it was immediately pounced 

 upon and devoured by one of the woodcock. 

 Presently another worm made its appear- 

 ance, and so on until the two woodcock had 

 devoured as many as a dozen of them. Then 

 the ' vein ' seemed exhausted, and the birds 

 took their leave. I have subsequently studied 

 the philosophy of this method of digging 

 bait, and have come to the conclusion that 

 certain birds are a great deal wiser than 

 certain bipeds without feathers. If you will 

 take a sharpened stick and drive it into the 

 ground a number of times, in a spot which 

 is prolific with worms, and then tap on the 

 ground with the stick for a few minutes, you 

 will find that the worms will come to the 

 surface, and that they will come up through 

 the holes which you have made. I account 

 for it by the supposition that the tapping of 

 the stick somehow affects the worms the 

 same as the patter of rain, and it is a well- 

 known fact that worms come to the surface 

 of the ground when it rains. The antics of 

 the woodcocks after they had made their 

 borings, then, were simply mimetic, and in- 

 tended to delude the worms into the belief 

 that it was raining in the upper world. The 

 worms, being deceived, came up and were 

 devoured. All this may seem ridiculous, but, 

 if it is not true, will some naturalist please 

 state how a woodcock can grasp and devour 

 a worm when its bill is confined in a solid, 

 tight-fitting tunnel of soil, and also how it is 

 enabled to know the exact spot where it may 

 sink its bill and strike a worm ? And further, 

 of all those who have seen a woodcock feed- 

 ing, how many ever saw it withdraw a worm 

 from the ground with its bill ? " 



The Colorado River of Texas. The Colo- 

 rado River of Texas is described by Prof. Rob- 

 ert T. Hill as presenting most interesting feat- 

 ures, which rival in some respects those of 

 the Colorado of the West. It begins in the 



dry arroyas which border the eastern scarp 

 of the " Staked Plain," where it has cut 

 canons nearly a thousand feet deep in the 

 soft Quaternary, Cretaceous, and Triassic 

 strata, recording in their precipitousness both 

 the aridity and the gradual elevation of the 

 region. Between the ninety-seventh and nine- 

 ty-eighth meridians it cuts through an area 

 of Palaeozoic rocks which was the land bar- 

 rier between the Atlantic Ocean and the in- 

 land sea during Mesozoic times. Within the 

 short distance traversed by the Atlantic 

 section of its course, it has worn through the 

 Cretaceous sediments of the plains and now 

 traverses nearly every terrane from the late 

 Quaternary to the earliest Cambrian. " Per- 

 haps nowhere else in the world can be seen 

 a more comprehensive geologic section, a 

 better illustration of sedimentary and igne- 

 ous rocks and their relation to topographic 

 form and economic conditions and other 

 geologic features dependent upon structure, 

 than in that portion of the Colorado which 

 traverses the counties of Burnet and Travis. 

 . . . Here the erosion of the river-basin has 

 exposed nearly ten thousand feet of struct- 

 ure that would otherwise not be exposed, 

 and every bend serves to reveal some inter- 

 esting topographic or geologic fact. . . . When 

 it is added," the author concludes, " that no 

 man has ever explored the deep canons, that 

 the paleontology is almost untouched, that 

 hardly any details of all these grand features 

 have been recorded, one can but feel that 

 the student of geology has here an inexhaust- 

 ible field before him." 



NOTES. 



Prof. H. A. Rowland, of Johns Hopkins 

 University, has been elected one of the for- 

 eign members of the Royal Society, in rec- 

 ognition of his determination in absolute 

 measure of the magnetic susceptibilities of 

 iron, nickel, and cobalt ; his accurate meas- 

 urements of fundamental physical constants ; 

 his experimental proof of the electro-mag- 

 netic effect of convection; his theory and 

 construction of curved diffraction-gratings 

 of very great dispersive power ; and the 

 effectual aid which he has given to the 

 progress of physics in America and other 

 countries. Prof. Cannazaro, of Rome, and 

 Prof. Chauveau, of Paris, were elected for- 

 eign members on the same day. 



An experiment has been made at the 

 agricultural station of Champ de l'Air, Vau- 



