68 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



on the back and ear. Its head was chafed by the shelf 

 above, and no care seemed to be taken of it whatever. 

 There were eight white ribs on the upper mandible, and 

 eleven on the lower. Perhaps the principal birds of local 

 interest are a White's Thrush — the first killed in Europe, 

 two young Sea Eagles, and a Pelican {Pelecanus onocrotabis), 

 which was shot at Remilly in 1835. 



On the 13th I was deputed to accompany a lady who 

 was leaving our party to return to Carlsruhe. We had 

 hardly started and got clear of Metz station when we ran 

 into a train of trucks, and broke the buffer of a waggon. 

 We proceeded again, but we had not gone very far before we 

 were once more brought to a standstill by an accident to a 

 train just in front of us. This announcement filled some of 

 the passengers with consternation, but after sitting still 

 about an hour we were all ordered out. It was now quite 

 dark. There had been a rapid thaw, and nobody relished 

 a walk of two hundred yards in the slush and melting snow 

 into the heart of a deep wood, where the cutting took us, to 

 a place where sixty men, with flaring laths dipped in pitch, 

 were working against time to repair the loosened line. It 

 was a wild sight. Three of the carriages had fallen over 

 the embankment, but whether many people had been 

 wounded I could not hear. My only wonder is that the 

 trains ran at all, considering how disorganised everything 

 was. I have no doubt it was the passage of the heavy 

 artillery which had displaced the metals. 



There is rather a nice Museum at Carlsruhe. I remarked 

 a curious variety of our common Nuthatch, in which 

 the throat and crown of the head were pure black, and 

 another specimen pure white. I never heard of but 

 two other vv^hite Nuthatches ; the first killed in August, 

 1834, in Suffolk (Mag. of Nat. Hist, VIII., p. 112); the 

 second at Lyng in Norfolk, in 1846, presented to me by 

 Mrs. Clarke. I also remarked a Great Titmouse with 



