OBSERVATIONS. 



323 



Small Birds. — In the interesting 

 report of the Leeds Naturalist 

 Society, in No. 18, of the " Natu- 

 ralist," reference is made to the 

 scarcity of small birds in France. 

 I beg leave to point out that this 

 scarcity is probably in consequence 

 of the insufficiency of breeding 

 accommodation. On this subject 

 Mr. Thompson, the Irish naturalist, 

 remarked many years ago ; — " Tra- 

 vellers in the north of France cannot 

 but perceive the almost total absence 

 of birds in that district. The coun- 

 try is open, and rarely broken by a 

 hedgerow ; and thus shelter being 

 denied them, they seek more fa- 

 voured spots." Nearly all the small 

 insectivorous birds breed in hedges, 

 bushes, or coppices. Another fact 

 is further explanatory of this paucity 

 of birds in France : the French kill 

 nearly everything that flies, how- 

 ever small it may be, for the table. 

 In Italy as well as France, birds as 

 small as the robin, are regularly 

 killed for food. Allusion is made 

 by Mr. Dixon to Blackbirds, in a 

 way which seems to imply that the 

 practice followed by gardeners and 

 others of destroying them is repre- 

 hensible. I can affirm that the 

 blackbird is a great pest in an 

 orchard ; I have had ample oppor- 

 tunity of judging of its orchard 

 habits. It is perhaps the most 

 frugivorous of all the thrushes. It j 

 has a particular fondness for goose- j 



berries. The injury it does among 

 the gooseberries must not be esti- 

 mated by what it consumes. Many 

 are pecked at, and rendered value- 

 less, and then left. The Blackbird 

 is not such a friend to gardeners as 

 many seem to suppose. It feeds 

 partially on insects only during 

 about two months of the year, April 

 and May. In June it turns to fruit, 

 and lives almost entirely on fruit or 

 seeds, cultivated or wild, throughout 

 the summer and winter to the end 

 of March. In the winter months it 

 lives much on fallen fruit. — George 

 Roberts. 



The Recent Exhumation of Bones 

 of the Great Auk. — A very interesting 

 fact in connexion with Ornithology, 

 which has but recently come to 

 light, is the discovery of some fos- 

 siliferous remains of the Great Auk 

 {Alca impennis), in the ancient shell- 

 mounds and deposits in Caithness. 

 This bird is now utterly extinct in 

 Europe, having but lately died out 

 in Ireland, but said to survive in 

 the inhospitable wilds of Spitzbergen 

 and Greenland. The bones of the 

 Alca impennis are of very frequent 

 occurrence in the Danish kjokken- 

 moddings, or refuse heaps, where 

 by some, they have been thought to 

 imply great antiquity and a more 

 glacial climate, but it is believed 

 that they have never been found in 

 any tumuli or mounds of a later 

 formation than these primeval de- 



