168 Oxydulous Copper. 



Having mentioned the house-sparrow, I presume to notice 

 one of their social actions, which I do not remember to have 

 seen alluded to by any ornithologist ; it is this. When the 

 community are assembled, quietly feeding or hopping about 

 among the branches of trees, in an instant a knot of the males 

 will surround or join in pursuit of a single female, whom they 

 ungallantly harass by their united endeavours to peck at her 

 on every side. She defends herself with open bill, and with 

 threatening attitudes attempts to keep her tormentors off; 

 they, all the while, keeping up a noisy outcry of their com- 

 mon yelping note in the highest key, which may be heard 

 over a whole village. After two or three minutes of noisy 

 clamour, the males desist, are appeased, and all return to 

 their ordinary employments again. Whether the persecuted 

 female be a vagrant, and so made a show of, or an intruder, 

 and therefore abused, is not easily guessed ; but it is an 

 action often occurring among a society of sparrows. If such 

 rencounters only took place in the pairing season, they might 

 be accounted for ; but they happen at all times, and particu- 

 larly in the depth of winter. Perhaps some of your readers 

 may be able to give a better account of this strange demeanour 

 of the sparrows. — J. M. Chelsea. Jan. 3. 1837. 



Oxydulous Coppe?\ — This substance, which is not very 

 abundant in nature, has, nevertheless, been found in many 

 localities. It usually assumes the form of the regular octohe- 

 dron, more or less modified, and passing on one side to the 

 cube, and on the other to the dodecahedron. In Siberia, at 

 Chessy, and in Cornwall, it occurs, though rarely, in the 

 cubic form. I am not, however, aware that its occurrence in 

 detached cubes has hitherto been noticed ; and although 

 many months since I obtained a few of these, and was conse- 

 quently aware of their existence, it is only very lately that I 

 met with a considerable number of them, soon after their 

 arrival from Cornwall. These cubes vary in dimensions from 

 a quarter to nearly three quarters of an inch ; they are of a 

 very dark colour ; many of them are nearly complete at all 

 their angles, more particularly the smaller ones. Occasion- 

 ally two or three are grouped together; some of them are 

 accompanied by a small quantity of green carbonate of cop- 

 per. Very few are slightly modified, having some of the 

 planes which tend to the rhombic dodecahedron ; and one 

 very large crystal, being exactly half an inch long, which is 

 adhering to a little quartz, has the planes of the octohedron 

 as its solid angles. — G. B. Soisoerby. 



