Journal. 377 



specific gravities had been placed in a tall bottle ; this had then been 

 completely filled with hot distilled water, and the carefully ground stopper 

 luted down with paraffin. The vessel was thus entirely free of air. 



Having been exposed to the cold of the evening until the water had just 

 " begun to freeze, the bottle was placed on the table. A considerable number of 

 tlie balls were at the bottom, the greater number at the top. As the water was 

 slowly warmed by the air of the room, it contracted while the glass of the 

 balls expanded, as was shown by the ascent, one after another, of the heavy 

 balls, until the last of them — which was barely lighter than water at its 

 greatest density — had gone up. 



On being still further warmed, the expansion of the water in excess of that 

 of glass was shown by the subsequent descent of the balls in inverse order. 



It was mentioned that, if in repose, the water may be cooled considerably 

 below the usual freezing point, several of the lighter balls then descending. 

 AVhen the freezing begins, the spikes of ice shoot through the fluid, entangling 

 these balls, which as the ice thaws ascend rapidly. It is thus shown, that 

 water continues to expand on being cooled below the zero of the thermometer. 



2. "On the Marine Invertebrate Fauna of Lamlash Bay." By William 



Abbott Hekdman, B.Sc. 



3. "Note on the Flight of Wild Geese, etc., seen near Edinburgh, and on 



the migratory flights of birds as observed in the Dardanelles." By 

 D. Christison, M.D. (Communicated by Dr J. A. Smith.) 



Dr Christison writes as follows: "About the 18th of December, when 

 driving in an open carriage, and nearly opposite the fourth milestone on the 

 Queensferry Road, about four o'clock in the afternoon, my brother drew my 

 attention to a flight of birds overhead, numbering about forty, in a perfectly 

 regular wedge formation ; one side of the wedge, however, being much longer 

 than the other and giving off" a branch, which again gave off" a subsidiary 

 branch. 



"They were flying in the direction of Loch Leven, and I thought at the 

 time that they were migrating northwards, as the weather then was much 

 milder in Scotland than in England or the Continent, as indeed it continued 

 to be almost to the present time. 



"But on Christmas Day at the same spot and hour, and flying in the same 

 direction, we saw a very much larger flight which must have numbered several 

 hundreds if not a thousand birds. We first noticed a body very much the 

 same in numbers and formation as that of the previous occasion ; then after 

 some interval two or three groups numbering from two to half-a-dozen ; then 

 another wedge-shaped body of about thirty ; and lastly a very long string of 

 them, which my brother and I estimated to be about a quarter of a mile long : 

 certainly not less. Unfortunately, not anticipating this large flight at the end, 

 we had driven on so far that we could not make out the precise formation. 

 Seeing it so much from the side, it resembled a long and somewhat irregular line. 



" The occurrence of this second flight, at precisely the same spot and time in 

 the evening as in the instances a week previously, inclined me to the view 

 that these were not instances of migration, but that the birds were merely 

 flying home in the evening to Loch Leven from feeding excursions in the 

 wild country about the Pentlands. I am not aware, however, whether it is 

 the habit of geese to fly such long distances for feeding purposes. It is so 

 VOL. V. 2 B 



