June 25, 1974] 
NATURE 
439 
rooms, one for developing photographs, one for visual 
observations, and one for X-rays. The ordinary table 
for X-ray observations has been modified for work on 
anesthetised animals. An ultra-microscope is in- 
stalled in the room devoted t» research on colloids. 
On the north side of the second floor are 
rooms for microscopic and experimental neurology. 
Three rooms are specially fitted for blood gas analysis. 
The laboratory also contains a large library well sup- 
plied with physiological books and periodicals. 
The class-rooms occupy the fourth and fifth floors; 
there are two large experimental rooms, one for 
elementary and the other for advanced work, and a 
histology room with places for 150 students. Adjoin- 
ing is a small demonstration room, holding about 
fifty, and on the first floor is a larger demonstration 
room, holding about eighty. This latter room has 
dark blinds, moved up and down by a motor, which 
can be set in action from the lecturer’s table. It is 
fitted with epidiascope and with kinematograph. 
The architect of the building is Sir Thomas Jackson. 
In the wing to be built later on the north side will 
come the large lecture room and some additional 
rooms and offices. 
ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES. 
Ae the February number of British Birds the Rev. 
F. C. R. Jourdain and Mr. Clifford Borrer con- 
tribute an article on erythrism in the eggs of British 
species, that is to say, eggs in which the normal 
type of colouring has been replaced by one in which 
the markings are of various shades of red or reddish- 
brown; in other words, those in which the pigment 
consists solely of odrhodein; but the range of colour- 
variation in the species includes eggs coloured with 
bile-pigment (biliverdin), either alone or with other 
pigment, to form the various greens and blues. For 
this reason the eggs of the Accipitres, which, although 
really erythristic, seldom show traces of other colour- 
ing matter, are excluded As might have been ex- 
pected, the erythristic variation generally extends to 
the entire clutch. Whether individual birds which lay 
erythristic eggs in one season, do so always, is a 
point to which no reference is made. 
In the Selborne Magazine for February. members 
of the Committee for the Economic Preservation of 
Birds direct attention to species of which the plumage 
may be used without involving any destruction other 
than would normally occur, as in the case of game- 
birds, or without any destruction at all, as in the case 
of the ostrich, rhea, and, it is said, the peacock. 
On the other hand, it is urged that the slaughter of 
mischievous species, like many of the grain-eating 
parrots, is justifiable, and therefore that their plumage 
may be worn. 
The feature of the winter number (1913) of Bird 
Notes and News is a coloured plate by Mr. Lodge 
of some of the species most severely persecuted by 
the plumage-trade. Statistics of the numbers of skins 
of various species offered at the London auctions are 
given, in connection with the Plumage Bill. 
Bird-Lore (D. Appleton and Co., Harrisburg and 
New York) for January and February is a good num- 
ber, containing two coloured plates, and the four- 
teenth annual census of the local migrations of well- 
known American species. One of the results is to 
show that during the past season “ chickadees,’’ which 
seldom come so far south as Massachusetts, reached 
Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Rhinebeck. 
From a paper by Mr. H. Victor Jones in the 
February number of the Zoologist on certain para- 
NO. 2330, VOL. 93| 
_ hopes 
sites of birds, we learn that while rooks and the 
diurnal birds-of-prey—probably owing to the strength 
of their gastric juices—are practically free from intes- 
tinal infestations of this kind, curlews show, on the 
average, no fewer than 49:5 per head. As there seems 
to be a connection in many species between the num- 
bers of external and internal parasites, it is suggested 
that some of the former may serve as hosts for the 
latter during the earlier stages of their development. 
As one of the results of bird-protection, there are 
that kites may soon be seen in districts 
from which they have long since disappeared. During 
the last few years these birds have increased consider- 
, ably in numbers in Wales, and it is probable that the 
pair recorded by Messrs. Hale and Borrer in the 
March number of British Birds to have bred in 
Devonshire in the spring of 1913 were emigrants from 
that colony. Kites arealso recorded in the same issue, 
on more or less satisfactory evidence, to have been 
seen during 1913 in Somersetshire, Derbyshire, and 
Buckinghamshire. 
According to the January number of the Emu, 
it is expected that an Act for the reservation of 
| 300 acres to serve as a bird-sanctuary in Kangaroo 
Island will be passed by the Commonwealth Govern- 
ment next session. Lyre-birds, formerly abundant in 
very similar country in the Blackall Ranges, would 
probably flourish there. It is also recorded that at the 
annual congress of the R.A.O.U. a resolution was 
unanimously carried calling on the Government to 
pass a local Act on the lines of the British Plumage 
Prohibition Bill. 
In the Field of March 28 Mr. Seth Smith directs 
attention to the remarkable cry uttered by the king 
penguin in the Zoological Gardens. The bird is shy 
of going through the performance, but if gently 
stroked on the throat by its keeper will gradually 
raise its head and stretch its neck to the utmost, then, 
throwing out its chest, it emits a series of loud, 
trumpeting sounds which last for some seconds; the 
bird on the utterance of the last note suddenly drops 
its head, as if bowing to the audience. The “song” 
and the concluding gesture are probably the “ display ”’ 
of the penguin, for in bowing it exhibits to the best 
advantage the brilliant golden patches on the sides of 
the head. As these patches are not confined to the 
male sex, it is probable that both sexes “ display.”’ 
The feeding habits of the South African ground- 
hornbill (Bycanistes buccinator), as exemplified in a 
pair of tame specimens, form the subject of a note by 
Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton in the Journal of the South 
African Ornithologists’ Union for December, 1913. 
Their extreme voracity, the lightning-like rapidity 
with which they would seize rats in a barn, and the 
small size of many of the insects upon which they 
fed, were some of the most noticeable features of 
these great birds. After devouring half a score of 
rats at one meal, these birds would be ready for a 
second meal an hour later; and they would seize and 
eat house-flies with the same apparent zest as they 
devoured rats. 
The beaks of crossbills are not always crossed in 
the same manner, the upper half in some individuals 
crossing to the bird’s own right, while in others the 
reverse condition obtains. Examination of 171 
specimens has enabled Mr. Miller Christy to state, in 
the April number of British Birds, that, so far as this 
evidence goes, the numbers of the two types are 
approximately equal—eighty-four of one type and 
eighty-three of the other, with four specimens indeter- 
minable. This, it is suggested, is an indication that 
the crossing of the beak is of recent origin, and there- 
fore probably not a Mendelian feature. 
