1 54? Short Communications : — 



pletely closed the nostrils, and the lower mandible was also 

 enveloped in the folds of a still larger excrescence of the kind. 

 I send you a drawing of the head (as I had the little creature 

 stuffed by Bull of Leadenhall-street, and it now hangs over 

 my study fireplace), by which you will more readily compre- 

 hend my description. When first taken, he seized at some 

 crumbs of bread with great avidity : we put him into a cage, 

 and attempted to nourish him, but he was quite incapable of 

 feeding himself, and was too weak to rest upon a perch. He 

 remained on the floor of his prison all night in a state of stupor, 

 and in the morning he was found with his feathers erected and 

 ruffled, as if suffering from cold, which foretold his death. 

 He died in the course of the day ; and his weight, when dead, 

 was exactly half an ounce. — W. B. Clarke. Parkstone, near 

 Poole, Dorset, Dec. 21. 1832. 



It will suffice that we remark that the drawing exhibits the 

 excrescence on the upper mandible, of the size of a small pea, 

 and that on the lower mandible of the size of a small horse- 

 bean. In Mr. Couch's manuscript catalogue of the birds 

 of Cornwall, with observations on them, which has long 

 lain by us, it is observed of the hedge sparrow : — " Common 

 through the year. Large excrescences are often observed on 

 the bill and legs." This last remark led us to judge a figure 

 unnecessary. This bird's liability to these excrescences is 

 not noticed in Rennie's Montagu's Ornithological Dictionary. 

 — J.D. 



A Bird's Nest in the Skull of an Esquimaux. — Mr. Bree 

 recalls (p. 32.) the narration, by *Seolopax Rusticola (Vol. V. 

 p. 289.), of a tomtit's building its nest and rearing its young 

 in the mouth of Tom Otter, the murderer. For a parallel to 

 this fact, I would refer your readers to the narrative of the 

 Arctic voyages, by Parry, or Lyon, or Franklin, where it is 

 recorded that a bird's nest was found in the skull of an 

 Esquimaux, upon the shore of some island. I have lost my 

 memorandum of the volume, and have none of these works 

 with me here ; otherwise I would give a precise reference to 

 the statement. — W. B. Clarke. Parkstone, Jan. 9. 1833. 



Insects. — Device for e?itrapping Insects. — In entomology, 

 I think every student must feel the want of contrivances to 

 entrap the objects of his search. This deficiency probably 

 arises from the nature of many species not being thoroughly 

 understood, and consequently it is almost impossible to invent 

 any stratagem certain to capture them, when they follow their 

 natural habits. A plan which I adopt for procuring insects 

 inhabiting wood or other substances is very simple, and no 

 doubt would be of as much advantage to others as it has been 



