THE LATE FROST. u[> 



should it not hold good of the Bank Martins also? although their multitudes 

 would almost defy the computation. 



Linnaeus named these evidently from their habit of frequenting water-sides, 

 the word riparia signifying pertaining to a river's bank, and certainly this is 

 the habit with the mass, but there are parts of the country quite remote from 

 considerable rivers where I have often seen colonies of these birds. One 

 instance of this kind was somewhat singular. It was, I think, somewhere 

 about the year 1824 that a colony of Bank Martins had established themselves 

 in the sandy sides of the Great Western Road, near Virginia Water, well 

 known as the south-eastern extremity of Windsor Great Park. The rain 

 having washed away some of this soft soil, it was thought advisable still 

 further to shelve the earth away and lower the hill, and this work of course 

 destroyed the fastnesses of these little creatures, who, at their return to their 

 old habitat, found it not. What was to be done? True the bank remained, 

 and the holes being utterly worked away, it might be supposed that it would 

 have been the same thing to have dug away anew there as well as anywhere 

 else, not to mention local predilection, but, whether the soil was too hard or 

 not I cannot say, at all events they fled the spot, and at once established a 

 colony in a cottage garden some three miles distant, in a soft sand-pit side, 

 and there for years — many years — regularly bored and nested, when, by, the de- 

 struction or filling up of the pit, they were again ousted, and I know no farther 

 of their movements. It is not uncommon for a few pairs suddenly to take up 

 their residence where they have never before been seen, but they never stay. 



The Sand Martin is a pretty little bird, but unfortunately so infested by 

 a species of insect known as the Hippobosca Hirundinis, that an examination 

 of them too closely is almost thereby forbidden, but I know of no prettier 

 recreation on a warm August afternoon than sitting on the river's bank and 

 watching their flitting movements, ever presenting a pleasant variety of scene, 

 and not only pleasant but instructive; their sweet little voices, their agility 

 of wing, their elegance, their delicacy of form, and all their little actions; it 

 really deserves more than the mere word ^amusing' to describe it. I think it 

 is these apparently insignificant pleasures that make up a great mass of our 

 happiness here. 



Lincolns Inn Fields, November. 



THE LATE FROST. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATURALIST. 



Sir, . 



It may be interesting to some of your meteorological readers 



to know that during the late severe frost the thermometer here did not sink 



below 18° Fah,, according to the register kept by the Scarborough Philosophical 



Society, and that on the day on which in London it sank to 8° below zero,"' 



* Vide Mr. Lowe's observations, "The Times," Jaauary 5th, 1854. 



