60 The Brithh Naturalist. 



at a loss to conceive how it can collect mud or clay for the 

 purposes of nidification : nor is the fact so ; for the swifts' 

 nests which we have examined in the days of our youth were 

 loose and slovenly structures, composed chiefly of feathers 

 and such other substances as might be collected by the bird 

 in the air. We never detected the swift in the act of " pulling 

 grass, feathers, &c., very dexterously from other birds," and 

 therefore cannot speak to the point ; but that such may be 

 the case is by no means improbable. 



Entomology is a department of natural history in which 

 our author appears to have made no very, great proficiency. 

 He speaks (p. 366.) of moths being " always indolent." 

 Doubtless, like all other animals, they are so, when at rest ; 

 and the majority of moths being nocturnal insects, the period 

 of rest to them is during the daytime : but many Phalae^nae 

 fly abroad by day as well as by night, and evince no incon- 

 siderable activity and power of flight. Every person of the 

 least observation must have witnessed the evolutions of the 

 common golden Y moth (A^octua gamma) for example, 

 which visits our gardens all through the summer, and to a 

 late period of the autumn, hovering about the flowers that are 

 still in bloom, somewhat in the manner of the humming-bird 

 sphinx (Macroglossa stellatarum), inserting its proboscis into 

 the blossoms, and adroitly extracting the nectareous juices, 

 while it poises itself on the wing. 



The second volume of the British Naturalist, to which we 

 now advert, contains (besides a short introduction) three 

 parts severally entitled the Year, Spring, and Summer. 

 We have quoted so largely from the first volume, that 

 we must endeavour to be somewhat more sparing in our 

 extracts from the second. We cannot, however, resist the 

 inclination we feel to transcribe the following rather length- 

 ened passage, as it lays the axe to the root of a very pre- 

 vailing and obstinate vulgar error : — 



" There is nothing more common than to predict the future state of the 

 season, from some single appearance in the early part of it ; and yet there 

 is nothing more unphilosophical or fallacious. An early blossom, an early 

 bee, or an early swallow, or the early appearance of any other production 

 of nature, is no evidence whatever of the kind of weather that is to come, 

 though the belief that it is so is both very general and very obstinate. 

 The appearance of these things is the effect of the weather, not the cause, 

 and it is what we may call an external effect ; that is, it does not enter 

 into the chain of causation. The weather of to-day must always have 

 some influence upon the weather of to-morrow ; but its effects will not be 

 altered in the smallest tittle, whether it does or does not call out of the 

 cranny in which it has been hybernated, some wasp, or some swallow that 

 was too weak for the autumnal migration. Birds, blossoms, and butter- 

 flies do not come in expectation of fine weather ; if they did, the early 



