116 NOTES TO THE 



An unfortunate misprint once sent a number of " Sunday out " 

 people of Carlisle to the house of a valued correspondent of 

 Land and Water, It appeared from the newspaper that there 

 were three hundred owls feeding in the front of his lawn; this mis- 

 statement was accounted for by the fact that when the paper 

 was being printed off the letter " f " toll out in front of the 

 word " owls," which, of course, should have been three hundred 

 fowls. 



An owl-call can be made thus : Bend up all the fingers of the 

 right hand, clasp them tight with the fingers of the left, leaving 

 a hollow ; crook the two thumbs so as to leave a crack : blow 

 sharp into the hollow. The call will act better if the hands are 

 wetted. I learnt this from a jagd-meister in a forest near 

 Giessen, when studying chemistry there with Professor Liehig. 

 This jagd-meister used to conceal himself in a bush and call up 

 the poor roe deer to be shot, with what he calls a " geiss blat," 

 or roe-deer call. It was made with tin, like the stop of a 

 bassoon. 



At page 124 White says his " owls hoot in B flat." I really wish 

 that some good musician would go to the Zoological Gardens and 

 put into writing the various notes sounded by the animals and 

 birds. In April 1875 I made a splendid cast of an elephant's trunk, 

 also casts of sections of it. The trunk is used by its owner as a 

 musical instrument. Visitors at the Zoological Gardens may often 

 have heard a curious musical trumpeting by the female elephant 

 when she is eating her fresh hay. As I was anxious to know 

 what this note was in music, my friend Mr. C. H. Walker, or- 

 ganist of the Eev. Mr. Stuart's church, Munster-square, has 

 kindly been up to see what he could make of it ; he has hit it 

 off exactly, and has played it to me on Mr. Stuart's beautiful 

 organ. He tells me it is the lowest A in the bass on an organ 

 which goes down to double C. He uses the " Bourdon " stop 

 coupled with the double open diapason on the great organ. Mr. 

 Walker tells me that the higher note of the elephant when 

 trumpeting is C sharp. The musical note of the elephant when 

 eating is almost exactly imitated by striking gently and con- 

 tinuously and simultaneously the two lowest A A in the base on 

 an ordinary piano. Eeader, try it. 



MORTALITY AMONG MARTINS FROM PARASITES, p. 142. The Eev. 

 F. 0. Morris thus writes in Land and Water : I received the fol- 

 lowing the other day from Lieut-Colonel Ward, of Bannerdown 

 House, Wiltshire, dating from Eossiniere, Canton Vaud, Switzer- 

 land : " Having only recently seen in the Times of some time ago 

 your letter on the mortality among martins, and having observed 



