228 



fine [healthy little creatures. All the family seem of a most quarrelsome 

 disposition, chasing and fighting all day long, though they never seem to do 

 each other any harm. The cock parent-bird is very cruel to his mate and at 

 one time we thought he would kill her. They have started building again 

 and have some eggs, but are not sitting properly. 



The young ones were fed principal!}' on insectivorous food, meal- 

 worms, ants' eggs, white and spray millet, with lettuce and flowering grass 

 in addition. At six weeks old one baby cock tried to sing ; they twitch 

 and spread out their tails and chase a Violet-eared Waxbill and a Painted 

 Finch that happen to be in their cage with all the vigour of their parents. 



Our experience with a pair of Painted Finches {Emblema picla) is, 

 unfortunately, similar to that of Mr. K. Murray, as stated in the October 

 Magazine.* We lost the hen after laying some eggs and a post mortem 

 revealed a precisely similar condition to his bird. 



©rmtboloQical Botes During a flDiosummer 

 1bolioav> in tbe pennines. 



By H. GoodchiU), M.B.O.U. 



This year, for the first time for twenty years or more, I had an 

 opportunity of paying a visit, in the height of summer, to a village at the 

 foot of that long range of hills, known to Geologists and Geographers as 

 the Pennine Range. This range, which starts at the Scottish border and 

 runs almost due south to the Midlands, varies in character in different 

 parts, being spread out and broken into small hills, in the south, but being 

 compact and pronounced in the part I visited. Here the range faces 

 nearly south west and consists of steep slopes of the Carboniferous Lime- 

 stone series of strata, cut into deep mountain valleys (called " Gills") and 

 varied here and there with crags either of the Limestone itself, or of a hard 

 intrusive rock known to Geologists as Whin Sill. 



The cultivated land at the foot of this range is fertile and well 

 wooded — typical English agricultural country — with here and there a small 

 patch of priniseval moorland left to show us what it was like before it was 

 occupied by man. Between the cultivated part and the open mountain 

 or moorland (correctly know as " fell " or unenclosed land) there stretches 

 along the foot of the hills a series of extensive pastures, locally known as 

 " fell pastures," which are less visited and less disturbed than the lower 

 ground, and form a favourable resort for some species which would not 

 remain in more frequented parts. 



Throughout these various tracts, from the tops of the hills to the 

 lowest parts of the valleys, I was practically at liberty to range, with only 



* Mr. Murray's bird is still living-, it was ray bird whose death was mentioned in the 

 October issue.— Ed. 



