200 From Magazines, &c [,sf April 



stick, and scarify some of the good apples and dust them with 

 tlie strychnine. Great caution must be exercised in laying the 

 poison, especially if there are children about, so that no mishap 

 can occur." 



The fearful dangers necessarily involved in powdering the 

 apples, whether scarified or not, with deadly poison on a tree 

 from which apples are being drawn for human consumption 

 are so real and obvious that they need no emphasis. The 

 possibilities that may occur from the employment of poison in 

 this way by unskilled and perhaps careless people are so terrible 

 that the mere contemplation of such a suggestion makes one 

 stand aghast. Compared with this, the proposal to let loose 

 the Danysz microbes as rabbit destroyers is a mild conception, 

 for whilst there is some doubt as to the destructiveness of the 

 microbes on other forms of life than rabbits, there is none at all 

 about the effects of the strychnine. The mischievious tendencies 

 are so wide-reaching that the Government should take imme- 

 diate steps to denounce this proposed cure for the Parrot pest, 

 and meanwhile all persons having the right to sell strychnine 

 should be warned that the penalties of the Poisons Act will be 

 rigorously enforced against them if they sell it to orchard-keepers 

 to he used as directed above.— y^^t' (Melbourne), 19/2/08. 



Japanese Birds. — T/ie Ibis, January, 1908, contains a capital 

 article by Mr. Collingwood Ingram, M.B.O.U., entitled '■ Orni- 

 thological Notes from Japan." The article is chiefly field observa- 

 tions made in the early summer of 1907 on the slopes and uplands 

 of the volcano Fujiyama, which rises 12,370 feet from Suruga Bay. 

 Mr. Ingram's headquarters were, however, at about 2,300 feet 

 above sea-level. Seventy-four species of birds are enumerated, 

 and there is a beautiful coloured plate of eight species of birds' 

 eggs. The egg of Geociclila varia at once suggests that of G. 

 hinulata to Australians, and is figured from the first indis- 

 putable authentic eggs of this so-called " British bird," while 

 the figure of the Snipe's {Galliiiago australis) ^tq^'g is more 

 stone-coloured than the type figured by Campbell (" Nests and 

 Eggs of Australian Birds," pi. 25). Regarding the Australian 

 Snipe, Mr. Ingram's interesting field notes are quoted at 

 length : — 



" This Snipe was tolerably plentiful on the open grassy slopes of 

 Fujiyama, where I was forlunately able to observe its breeding habits. In 

 such localities the birds' presence could not very well be overlooked, owing 

 to the very reniaikai)le sounds produced by them during their aerial 

 evolutions, which in some respects were analogous to those indulged in by 

 other membe-s of the genus. About the middle of May (and doubtless 

 from an earlier date) they were being performed throughout the greater 

 part of the day, and it was unusual if one could not observe two or three 

 birds overhead at the same time. Like most a\ine sounds, the peculiar 



