GLEANINGS—REPORTS. 25 
organisms, on whose ‘‘ operations” Professor Huxley will no doubt give 
full information. 
~ Tanners to Mount Sprcmvens on.—For this purpose wood is 
generally used, but it is expensive, liable to warp, and difficult to cut 
true. Various substitutes have been recommended, such as glass 
covered with paper, &c., but we have lately tried a plan recommended by 
Prof. Miall, of the Leeds Museum, and found it to answer perfectly. It 
consists in using pasteboard three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness, or 
if the tablets are large one-quarter of an inch thick. Any large paper 
dealer will make pasteboard of any required thickness, and cut it to any 
size, with perfect accuracy, bya machine. The tablets may be covered 
with paper of different tints to aid in classification, and the specimens 
should be fixed on with coaguline. 
A Microscorican Socrery, Literary, and Scientific Institution has been 
formed at Boston, (mainly by the exertions of Messrs. F. W. Morris and 
B. J. Stow,) under the presidency of the Rev. G. E. Pattenden, LL.D. 
The first meeting was held in the Art Room, Shoofriars Hall, Boston, on 
Monday, the 16th December, when an address was delivered by the 
President, who said much that was interesting about botany, chemistry, 
geology, and microscopy. He congratulated the promoters upon their 
success in the formation of the society. The meeting then resulved itself 
into a conversazione and exhibition of Natural History and other 
specimens. 
Ace or Brros.—Mr. Gulson writes:—‘*Mr. Miller, of Combe 
Gardens, has sent me the following amusing account of a 
venerable Jackdaw, who is one of his protégés. He says:— 
‘The bird in question was reared in the spring of 1865, by one 
of the under-gardeners here. I know the date is correct. I took 
it from our labour-book, and the young man was only with me one 
spring—that of 1865, in which the daw was reared. The age of the bird 
is now, calculating from June, 1865, 134 years. Jack was left to the 
gardeners as a sort of legacy. I took to the bird and fed it with crumbs from 
my window. He came regularly for his food. For several years this pet 
mated with the wild birds. One he selected, and I believe stuck to all 
through; I know it from the drooping habit of its wings. Their nest 
was in a hole in an ash tree close by. Many a lump of bread did Jack 
carry away from my window to feed his family year after year in that 
hole. Besides his mate, Jack has a great number of relations and 
followers or friends, who come to my window in hard times. Jack is 
blind of one eye, the result no doubt of defending his nest in the hollow 
tree. He also has a crooked leg, but, considering “his age, he is in fairly 
good plumage, and comes for his soft bread regularly. He does not like 
crust.’ Considering the enormous number of young birds which are 
reared every year, the death-rate among the feathered tribes must neces- 
sarily be a very high one, and few can survive to the good old age of the 
bird mentioned above. During a hard winter many sorts of birds find 
subsistence difficult, and their number becomes greatly reduced, but a 
few mild seasons and abundant food soon restore about their average 
number.” 
Aeports of Societies, 
BIRMINGHAM AND MIDLAND INSTITUTE SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY.— 
November 27th.—Mr. G. S. Dunn, B.A., read a paper on the ‘‘ Human Ear.” In 
the course of it he stated that since the so-called Corti’s rods are absent in birds, 
they could not be the means whereby musical tunes are distinguished; but that 
