58 



HA R D WICKE ' S S CIE NCE - G SSIF. 



its gaping bill, shivering its wings and tail in the 

 greatest excitement. Last year there was a great 

 hulking cuckoo about our garden and orchard, quite 

 big enough one would think to take care of himself; 

 but no, he preferred to perch himself comfortably on 

 a rail, and open his great orange mouth every now 

 and then to receive the bounty of a poor little hedge- 

 sparrow which had to hoist itself up on tiptoe, and 

 crane its neck to reach the widely-gaping mouth of 

 the great glutton. One day in June, I noticed a 

 small party of creepers in a row of spruce fir-trees 

 busily hunting for food, and was considerably am.used 

 to see one of them (apparently a young bird) quietly 

 clinging to the branch of a fir, and waiting patiently 

 till one of the others brought it food. This was 

 effected in what I considered a very curious fashion, 

 for the parent in ascending the tree would turn aside 

 its head as it neared the youngster, and with its 

 long bill would insert some scrap into the mouth ol 

 the latter. This novel mode of feeding was repeated 

 several times while I was standing a short distance 

 off. 



I have seen creepers in small parties as late as the 

 middle of September. 



During the winter the creeper's sole occupation 

 is in collecting food from morning till night. When 

 the weather becomes severe, the poor little bird is 

 often rendered remarkably tame. This was espe- 

 cially the case in the unusually severe winter just 

 gone by. February ist of the present year, was a 

 wintry day indeed. In the afternoon of that day 

 a little tieeper came flying around me two or three 

 times, feeming quite obhvious of my presence. The 

 crnitl ologist had great facilities for making many 

 valu;ible notes on his favourite pursuit during the 

 lono-to-be-remembered winter of 1878-9. 



SlaiuUake, Witney, Oxoii. 



NOTES BY A NATURALIST IN MAURITIUS 

 AND GREAT BRITAIN. 



By WiLMOT H. T. Tower, B.A., M.R.C.S. 



1"^HESE notes were taken during a residence of 

 more than four years in Mauritius, and added 

 are a few notes taken at home : 



Destruction of a Beetle indirectly by the frailty of the 

 flowers of a Tree, directly by Ants. — A beetle of the 

 size and characters of the English rose beetle, but of 

 a purplish black colour with white spots, used to 

 haunt a small tree growing in the back yard of my 

 hut at Port Louis ; the yard and hut were densely 

 populated by several kinds of ants ; the beetles 

 would fall from the tree so frequently on their backs, 

 and rest there kicking helplessly, till an army of 

 small black ants soon came on the field, and carried 

 off the helpless insect — to them a gi.int. 



The useless ClctTcs of a Crustacean. — A macrurous 



decapod {Hymenocera elegans), which I found rarely 

 in holes amongst the corals, of a very handsome 

 cream-colour, spotted with a few large peacock-like 

 ocelli on the body and claws, these latter were flat, 

 thin and flexible as paper, the nippers being at the 

 top and inner edge, and were so small as to be of 

 little use for any purpose. 



Protective imitation by Colour in a Crustaaan, — 

 Macrurous decapod — a trypton, probably a new 

 species — in size and shape very like the common 

 sand-hopper, I found only among the spines of the 

 echinus common on the reef ; the spines were marked 

 by -a few longitudinal stripes, alternately of a rich 

 brown and darkish purple ; the trypton was marked 

 e-xactly in the same way. 



Curious habit of a sxinmining Crab. — This crab 

 (^Achelous granulatus) was common enough in water 

 between the shore and reef, and was about an inch 

 across the carapace ; it used to swim rapidly towards 

 my feet when out wading, and there bury itself in 

 the sand. I never saw it swim away from me, and 

 can only suppose it did so, because the stirred-up- 

 sand at my feet made the water rather turbid. 



A marine Happy Family. — I found in holes in the 

 coral a macrurous decapod (the specimens were lost, 

 so I do not know its name) about the size of a large 

 shrimp, always in pairs, male and female, and with 

 them one or two brittle star fishes, and a large species 

 of sea mouse (Aphrodite). 



Differences in characters of O. episcopalis on th: 

 leeward and windward coasts of the island. — At Black 

 River, on the leeward coast, the reef was a long dis- 

 tance from the shore, and the bay protected from the 

 prevailing trade-wind by lofty mountains ; the bottom 

 was dark (a contrast to the usual white coral sand 

 bottom) from the deposit of vegetable debris brought 

 down by the river during the rainy season. Here 

 we had comparative darkness and tranquillity, and the 

 olives (I fished up several hundreds of them) were large 

 with a somewhat thin shell, and much varied in mark- 

 ing (but all of a darkish tinge), from some that were 

 a deep brown, through others v.'ith dark brown rings 

 and blotches, to the ordinary colour with roundish 

 brown dots on a yellowish- white ground. On parts 

 of the windward side where the reef was close to the 

 shore, or where there was no reef at all, heavy seas 

 playing on it for most months of the year, flying 

 before the trade-wind, the olives were much smaller, 

 thicker, and of an almost uniform colouring, viz , 

 yellowish-white with small dark spots ; tlie sea-bottom 

 and shore too here were of the usual ^\ hite coral 

 debris, so it would seem the thickness was due to the 

 violence of the sea, and the colour to the light- 

 coloured bottom, and the shallowness of the water 

 allowing greater penetration of light. 



Identifying the bones of the extinct bird the Solitaire 



from the island of Rodrigues. — I do not know whether 



this has been described as it actually occurred, or is 



generally known, but as an interesting episode in the 



