ORNITHOLOGY 



93 



Swiffs and Weather. 

 West Devonport, Tasmania, Australia. 

 To the Editor : 



Perhaps the following" note may be of 

 interest, and may induce some of the 

 readers of the The Guide to Nature to 

 study and record the movements of the 

 American members of that extraordinary 

 group of birds — the swifts. In a paper 

 read before the Royal Society of Tasma- 

 nia I endeavored some time ago to trace 

 a connection between the appearances of 

 the spine-tailed swift {Chactura canda- 

 cuta) both in this state and in Mctoria 

 (Australia) and disturbed weather con- 

 ditions, showing" that in all cases which 

 had come under my notice the appear- 

 ance of this swift meant atmospheric 

 change. This was again strikingly 

 demonstrated on the twentv-seventh of 

 February of this year, when in the morn- 

 ing I saw fifty or sixty of these fine birds 

 coursing insects over the paddocks. The 

 day was sultry but fine. Soon afterward 

 I met a friend who spends most of his 

 life out-of-doors and, like myself, takes 

 pleasure in noting natural objects. I 

 told him that I had just seen a large 

 party of swifts for the first time this 

 summer, the twenty-seventh of February 

 being near the end of summer wath us in 

 these southern latitudes, when he re- 

 marked, "Then rain is not far away." 

 That very evening a light rain began to 

 fall, and practically the whole of the fol- 

 lowing day was wet. Not only so. but 

 for several days afterward we had high 

 winds and showers, culminating on the 

 seventh and eighth of ]\Iarch in a tre- 

 mendous northwesterly gale, w'hich did 

 a great deal of damage. All this distur- 

 bance came after months of fine settled 

 weather. On the ninth of March the 

 swifts were migrating from southeast to 

 northwest, passing in twos and threes 

 every few minutes, from two to four 

 o'clock, during the afternoon. As this 

 species is often with us until April and I 

 have seen it as late as the twenty-seventh 

 of that month, I took this early departure 

 to mean rough and cold autumn weather. 

 a supposition which has since been abun- 

 dantly verified. Some notes of mine on 

 the subiect were sent to the Tasmanian 

 Field Club, which has its headquarters 

 in Hobart, at the end of the state oppo- 

 site to that in which I reside, and were 

 read by the secretary at a recent meeting. 

 Considerable discussion ensued, most of 

 the members agreeing, however, that the 



sudden appearance of the spine-tailed 

 swift, especially if flying low, after a 

 long spell of fine weather, indicates a 

 break-up of anticyclonic conditions. I 

 was pleased to receive this confirmation 

 of my series of observations which cover 

 a good many years. 



H. Stuart Dove. 



John Burroughs's Diet. 



This veteran naturalist, who has re- 

 cently passed his seventy-eighth birth- 

 day, tells us that he is now in better 

 health and is better able to do his work 

 than he has been for years. In an inter- 

 esting article in "The Ladies' Home 

 Journal" he says : 



"Old age is not such a bugaboo after 

 all. He is, in many ways, better to live 

 with than Youth, because he leaves you 

 more at your ease ; you are in the calmer 

 waters ; the fret and fever of life have 

 greatly abated. Old Age brings the phil- 

 osophical mind ; he brings a deeper, wid- 

 er outlook upon life ; he brings more tol- 

 erance and charity and good will." 



As a part of his experience we learn 

 the astonishing fact that he has dis- 

 carded from his dietary eggs and raw 

 apples. He also says, and this is less 

 surprising, that he avoids pastry, new 

 bread, coiiee, tea, iced drinks and all al- 

 coholic beverages, but the most amazing 

 thing is that he uses neither eggs nor 

 raw apples. It has been generally sup- 

 posed that these are the prime factors 

 in the diet of one that lives near to na- 

 ture. But !Mr. Burroughs believes that 

 eggs are poison to some people. He was 

 induced to discard them through the in- 

 fluence of Professor Chittenden's book, 

 and by the fact that no eggs were given 

 to the Yale students upon whom Chitten- 

 den has been experimenting with various 

 svstems of diet. In a personal letter to 

 tiie editor of TiiE Guide to Nature, he 

 says : 



"I do not eat our grapes, or plums, or 

 pears and rarely a raw apple. I eat a 

 few ripe peaches and ripe strawberries 

 once a day. Oranges and grapefruit do 

 me more harm than good. With cooked 

 fruit I fare better. I can eat baked ap- 

 ples three times a day. The one raw 

 fruit that is medicine to me is the tree 

 melon or papaya of the Hawaiian 

 Islands." 



We shall be glad to learn from others, 

 especially of our elderly readers, as to 

 whether their experiences coincide with 

 this of the Dean of Naturalists. 



