64 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



affords a good opportunity of noting the aged plumage of this 

 species. It will be seen that the darker feathers of the head and 

 back have become quite black, and the lighter ones of the chest 

 and breast quite white, with a half-collar round the neck. The 

 food of the birds has been raw meat, curds, eggs, and insects, 

 such as flies, crickets, white grubs, beetles, ants, and ants' eggs. 

 In the same locality this species has frequently been kept in 

 captivity for periods of five to ten years, but the above-mentioned 

 pair are of special interest on account of their age. — A. Coles. 

 12th Jul}', 1897. 



Uncommon Birds. — For at least twenty-five years I have been 

 a close observer of both the resident birds and those species which 

 pay annual or irregular visits to my district, but until the present 

 season I had not seen either of the three species sent for exhibition 

 this evening — viz., the Porphyry-crowned Lorikeet, the Red-kneed 

 Dottrel, or the White-faced Storm Petrel. The latter bird was 

 shot in March last in a bush paddock, distant some eight or nine 

 miles from the sea-coast. A friend was out quail shooting when 

 his dog " stood" to a bird. It rose and flew, and after shooting it 

 my friend remarked that it was quite different from any bird he 

 had seen before, and kindly forwarded it to me. The finding of 

 this bird under such unusual circumstances seems to show that 

 some kinds of sea-birds at times leave their native element and 

 take excursions on land, as on one occasion I saw an adult 

 specimen of the Hoary-headed Grebe on dry land, many miles 

 from any water, and apparently in good health. — G. E. Shepherd. 

 Somerville, 14th June, 1897. 



A New Use for Spiders. — " When Kirby and Spence wrote 

 their chapter on " Direct benefits derived from Insects," and 

 recorded the use of insects for food, the use of honey from 

 bees for the same purpose, the use in medicine, and the 

 arts and manufactures of blister beetles, insect galls, Coccidas 

 furnishing lac, wax insects, and the silkworm, the time had 

 hardly arrived for the extensive collection of ants for the 

 manufacture of formic acid, or for their pupre as food for song 

 birds, and we feel sure that they could hardly have antici- 

 pated an industry in connection with an allied class of creatures 

 which has recently sprung up both in France and Pennsylvania, 

 and which consists of the farming of spiders for the purpose of 

 stocking wine cellars, and thus securing an almost immediate 

 coating of cobwebs to new wine bottles, giving them the appear- 

 ance of great age. This industry is carried on in a little French 

 village in the Department of Loire, and by an imported French- 

 man named Grantaire, on the Lancaster Pike, four miles from 

 Philadelphia. This Frenchman raises Epeira vulgaris and JPephila 

 plumipes in large quantities, and sells them to wine merchants at 

 the rate of $10 per hundred." Bulletin, No. 7, new series, page 

 82, U.S. Depart of Agriculture, Division of Entomology, 1897. 



