222 



KNOWLEDGE & SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Se 



1904. 



this eviction must have been the work of the parent wagtails, 

 owing to the tender age and and helplessness of the cuckoo. 

 But this is purely supposition. 



Cuckoo Watching over its Young. 



The cuckoo would appear to be a much maligned bird, or at 

 least to be credited with fewer virtues than it really possesses. 

 In the Ficiii of August 6 a writer describes how a young and 

 full-fledged cuckoo was seen on a lawn making '■ a noise more 

 like squeaking than chirping," whilst overhead two old cuckoos 

 were hovering. On three consecutive days the same thing was 

 observed. In this account, however, there is no mention of 

 their tender solicitude taking a more practical shape, since 

 neither of the old birds appear to have fed their putative off- 

 spring. Since the cuckoo is well known to be a polygamist, 

 he is probably at most only mildly interested in anv of his 

 numerous oft'spring which must be scattered over the area of 

 his sojourn during his short stay in this country. 



Sexual Differences in the Wing of the 

 La-pwing. 



Hitherto the sexes of the lapwing ( I '(!);t7/!(5 cristatiis) have 

 been regarded by ornithologists as almost indistinguishable. 

 In the Fitld (July 161, Mr. F. W. Frohawk shows conclusively 

 that a very ready distinction maj' be drawn between the sexes 

 at all ages, inasmuch as in the male the primaries from the 

 3rd to the loth are both broader and longer than in the 

 female ; so much so that in the outstretched wing the primaries 

 of the male form a broad round fan projecting conspicuously 

 beyond the line of the free edge of the secondaries. Further, 

 in the male the secondaries grow shorter from without inwards 

 so as to impart a sinuous line to the free edge of this region of 

 the wing. It is strange that in so famihar a bird this difference 

 should so long have remained undetected. As Mr. Frohawk 

 points out, it is probably this great fan-shaped expansion of the 

 wing which makes the remarkable flight of the lapwing at the 

 breeding season possible. 



Decrease in Weight of Incuba.ting Eggs. 



Mr. H. S. Gladstone, in the last number of the Ibis, contri- 

 butes an [extremely interesting note wherein he shows, by a 

 series of careful weighings, that eggs lose in weight during 

 incubation. Experimenting with pheasants' eggs he shows, in 

 a table of averages, that between the first day and the twenty- 

 third the loss is as much as 2 drs. 12 grs. Weighed every 

 fourth day the loss on the average varies between 9 and 10 grs. 

 The history of any single egg is sometimes very striking; thus 

 an egg which, just laid, weighed 17 drs. ig grs. at the twentv- 

 tbird day only turned the scale at 13 drs. 10 grs. 



Blue throat near London. 



Mr. F. Chubb, in the ZvoUif^ist for Julv. records the occur- 

 rence of the Blue-throat (Cvmfti/i/a suai'a) at Sheen Connnon 

 on June 17. There can be no doubt about the identification 

 m this case, for he remarks: -'What struck me first was the 

 beautiful band of light blue round the throat. ... as it 

 settled on a fence within a few vards of where I stood." 

 Though he could not make oat the colour of the spot in the 

 throat, Mr. Chubb inclines to the belief that this bird was of 

 the red-spotted species, and in this we agree. The white spot 

 would have been conspicuous ; moreover it is a much rarer 

 visitor. 



Long eared Owl Nesting on the Ground. 



Since the long-eared owl (Asio ottis) very rarely nests on the 

 ground it is interesting to note that a further instance has 

 occurred at Witton Park, near Blackburn. A description of 

 the nest, together with an excellent picture of the female and 

 young, appears in the Zoulugist for J uly. 



ZOOLOGICAL. 



Gibbons in Sumatra. 



According to Dr. \V. V'olz, who has recently been travelling 

 in the country, the two banks of the Lematang River in the 

 Palembang district of Sumatra are respectively inhabited by 

 diff^erent species of long-armed apes, or gibbons. On the 

 west bank is found the siamang {Hylobates syndactylus), while 

 the country to the east of the river is the home of the agile 

 gibbon, or wau-wau (//. a,i;ilis). It is notnecessary tocapture, 

 or even to see, specimens of the two species in order to satisfy 

 oneself as to their limitations, for they may be readily distin- 

 guished by their cries, the siamang calling in a single note, 

 whereas the cry of the wau-wau forms two notes. The re- 

 markable thing about their distribution in Palembang is that 

 the two species are found in company throughout the rest of 

 Sumatra; and even in Palembangitself they inhabit the moun- 

 tain districts, where the river is so narrow that they could 

 easily leap over it, and yet they keep to the opposite banks. 



Papers R^ead. 



At the meeting of the Entomological Society of London held 

 on June i, Colonel Sainhoe read a paper on Tropical 

 African moths of the family Giomctrida: ; Mr. W. L. Distant 

 contributed some notes on additions to our knowledge of the 

 cicalas (Cicadidiz) ; the President communicated an article by 

 Mr. G. F. Leigh on series of butterflies of the species Papilio 

 ceiu-a and Hypulimnas iiiisippus ; while Mr. E. Saunders de- 

 scribed collections of Hymenoptera from Majorca and Spain. 



"f^ * * 



Wild Asses and the Quagga. 



The August issue of the Pruccedin^s of the Zoological Society 

 of London contains two coloured plates of Asiatic wild asses 

 now living in the Duke of Bedford's park at Woburn. The 

 two species portrayed are the kiang, or wild ass of Tibet, and 

 the chigetai, or wild ass of Mongolia. The description of the 

 two animals is by Mr. Lydekker, who, we understand, has 

 written a paper on wild asses generally, which will shortly be 

 pubhshed in Xovitiifes Zoologici^, the official journal of Mr. 

 Rothschilds splendid private museum at Tring. To the 

 journal first mentioned Mr. Lydekker also contributes some 

 notes on the extinct quagga, in which he confirms the alleged 

 existence in the skull of that species of a vestige of the cavity for 

 the face-gland which was fully developed in the ancestral three- 

 toed hipparion. He also refers to the recent gift to the British 

 Museum of a portion of the head-skin of a quagga shot in the 

 forties, which had been made into a sheath for a hunting- 

 knife. 



* * * 



The Lily-Cradled Bat. 



A gorgeously coloured Oriental bat [Ctrivuii!ii picta), whose 

 wings are brilliant orange and black, has been generally sup- 

 posed to owe this coloration to a protective resemblance to 

 the decaying leaves and ripe fruit of the plantain, among 

 which it commonly dwells. A correspondent of Captain 

 Stanley Flower has, however, stated in one district of Siam 

 this bat reposes in the flower of the Cala lily. The colour of 

 this Uly is not stated, but it may be presumed that it is some- 

 what similar to that of the bat. In commenting on the state- 

 ment. Dr. Jentink, of Leyden, remarks that " it sounds like a 

 wonderful tale, a golden red and black coloured bat sleeping 

 in a Uly-fiower ! " Can it be that the plaintain bat has a 

 double colour-adaptation — to the plantain in India and to the 

 Cala lily in Siam ? 



« * ♦ 



Alleged Cannibalism in Snakes. 



In a recent issue of the Journal of the Bombay Natural 

 Historj- Society numerous instances are cited of snakes 

 devouriug one another ; this kind of diet being stigmatised as 

 '• cannibalism." Seeing, however, that in all the instances 

 cited in this particular communication the devourer was 

 of a different species to the one devoured, this is 

 surely a misnomer. We might as well say that it is canni- 

 balism on the part of a great grey shrike to kill and eat a 

 sparrow, or of a rat to devour a field-mouse. When, as 

 happened some years ago in the Zoological Society's Menagerie 



