{Authors are responsible for notnenclature used.yc- 



The Scottish Naturalist 



No. 49.] 191 () [January 



EDITORIAL. 



Very little attention appears to have been bestowed by 

 ornithologists to the question of the rate of digestion in birds, 

 and }'et the subject has an important bearing upon the 

 economic status of particular species. A short paper by 

 Walter E. Collinge,^ describing a few experiments on the 

 Rook, Starling, and House Sparrow, undertaken by himself, 

 and quoting the observations of two other investigators in a 

 similar line of enquiry, forms an interesting and suggestive 

 contribution to the subject. Although the experiments 

 referred to are very few in number, yet the author claims the 

 establishment of two facts, viz., (i) that the rate of digestion 

 in the rook differs from that in the sparrow, and (2) that the 

 three species investigated digest their food in from four to 

 four and a half hours. 



A propos of the supposed causation of the disease known 

 as pellagra, referred to in our Editorial o{ OctohQX last, we may 

 draw attention to an important memoir by F. W. Edwards 

 of the British Museum, entitled " On the British Species of 

 Simulium. — I. The Adults."'-^ Thirteen species of the genus 

 are recognised as native to the British Isles. These are 



^ Journal of Economic Biology^ September 191 5, pp. 65-68. 

 - Bulletin of Entomological Research^ vol. vi., pp. 23-42 (June 191 5). 

 (See also synopsis in Enf. Mo. Mag. for Novemljer.) 



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