14.0 HONEY-BUZZARD. 



met with, which, is stated hy the writer to be a positive fact, 

 and as, in our view of the case, it is by no means unlikely to 

 have occurred, we give it. A peasant in the mountainous 

 part of the South of France, observing a great number of wild 

 Ducks settled on the ice of a small river that was frozen over, 

 fired into the midst of them, and was surprised to find that 

 not one of them took to flight. On going up, he found that, 

 owing to the severity of the frost, they were not only com- 

 pletely fastened to the ice by their feet, but that nearly one- 

 half were frozen to death. The above anecdotes will appear 

 less improbable, when we consider how rapidly, under favour- 

 able circumstances, even in our comparatively temperate 

 winters, ice is formed, and how unexpectedly birds or animals 

 unaware of it, might in consequence be imprisoned. It is 

 easy to form ice to a considerable extent, in a few minutes, if 

 water is poured over a level surface so that none shall escape; 

 for instance, over a wide floor or plain, smoothed with Roman 

 cement, flooded to the depth of less than a quarter of an inch. 

 A thin coating of water thus applied, will, even if the ther- 

 mometer is scarcely lower than the freezing point, almost 

 immediately become a sheet of ice, and if repeated two or 

 three times, will form a covering, capable of bearing the 

 heaviest weight without giving way. This was actually 

 practised with success on three successive days in November, 

 near Glasgow, for the purpose of preparing a perfectly smooth 

 sheet of water on a roughly-frozen pond, for a game, called, 

 in Scotland, a curling match. One-eighth of an inch in 

 thickness was found sufficient; it immediately froze, and 

 when the game was over at night, a similar additional coat- 

 ing was poured over it, for fresh use. 



We have seen that the common food of the Hawk tribe 

 consists of animals or birds, dead or living, with the excep- 

 tion of the Kestrel, which preys with equal satisfaction on 

 beetles ; but there is one particular Hawk, called the Honey- 

 buzzard (Falco apivorns), rather rare at present in England, 

 whose favourite food is bees and wasps (and not the honey of 

 the former, as has been erroneously supposed from its name), 

 which it devours greedily, apparently without ever suffering 



