MISCELLANY. 106 



Tevived it from its torpor; it appeared to enjoy its transition by nimbly scaling 

 every part of the furniture in all directions. It experienced no difficulty in 

 either ascending or descending the polished backs of the chairs, and when I 

 attempted to secure it it leaped from chair to chair with astonishing agility for so 

 small a .creature. On taking it into my hand, it shewed not the least disposition 

 to resent the liberty ; on the contrary it was very docile. On being set at liberty 

 it sprang at least two yards on to a table. I was much gratified in witnessing 

 its agile movements. In the evening I placed my little stranger with its original 

 domicile in a box, of which on the following morning I found it had taken pos- 

 session, and again relapsed into a state of torpidity, in which condition I transferred 

 my unconscious sleeper to a friend. I should think that by some accident its 

 domicile had been displaced from the original situation, which was the cause of my 

 finding it upon the surface of the ground, — J. I). Salmon, Godalming, Surrey, 

 Bee. 23, 1837. 



Instances op the Capture op Vanessa antiope. — In Captain Blomer's 

 Journal, under the date of June 1, 1833, he mentions having met with the Rev. 

 Mr. Walker, who told him of having seen a flight of Vanessa antiope pass over 

 near Cheltenham, and that he took a few of them. Mr. Spragge took one near 

 Chard in 1834, and Mr. Baker another ( $ ) at Bridgewater. One was seen in 

 company with V. atalanta and V. to, flying over and settling on an empty sugar- 

 cask in a grocer's yard there. — J. C. Dale, Glanville's Wootton, Dorsetshire, 

 July 9, 1837. 



Remarkable Fact. — In the early part of last week, whilst a servant belong- 

 ing to Rowland Hibbert, Esq., of Lamb-Hill, near Sheffield, was brushing a 

 hedge, he took off a bough which supported a Yellow Bunting's nest, and 

 found four eggs therein in a forward state of incubation. — Doncaster Gazette, 

 Jan. 12, 1838. — QThat a bird seldom known, by the most experienced observers, 

 to hatch before the beginning of June, or, at earliest, the latter end of May, 

 should be possessed of a brood in the middle of a severe January, is indeed a 

 " remarkable fact " — too remarkable, we think, for our readers to swallow with- 

 out some doubts. We scarcely know what to make of several other newspaper 

 accounts of Sparrows and Redbreasts building during the same month, while the 

 snow was thick on the ground, unless we may suppose it to be a " wise 

 ordination of providence," to husband the latent heat in their little frames ! 

 These, however, are birds which will always breed early when a favourable 

 opportunity offers ; but that a species which, like the Yellow Bunting, over 

 whose family affairs variation of climate has no control, should, all on a sudden, 

 be possessed with the desire of introducing its offspring into the world for the . 

 express purpose, as it were, of being starved to death — or, mayhap, of enlivening 

 th« «olumn9 of a provincial paper at Christmas-time ! — at least requires further 



