56 Short Papers and Notes. 
In a corner of the orchard yonder, as the spring wears on, the 
redstart will settle down after her wanderings, and in the ancestral 
hollow in the moss-grown tree will brood over her beautiful blue 
eggs, while her handsome mate will sing to her from the branch 
above the briefest of lyrics indeed, but glowing with the rich music 
of the south. The swallow will come north across the far Sahara 
and find her way back to the old shed on whose blackened rafters 
her nest has hung so long. The white-throat and the chaffinch, 
and many another rover, will return and join the musical throng 
that weave their fairy homes among the leaves. Let no hasty hand 
disturb them, or too curious eye drive them from their accustomed 
haunts. It is strange that any could be found to tear down the 
dainty fabric and scatter its contents on the ground. But alas! 
we are all familiar with the birdsnester, who on mischief bent 
strolls along the lane with a nest of gaping fledglings in his hat 
and a string of birds’ eggs in his hand. He is a young barbarian, 
the aversion of the old ladies of the parish. The parson has got 
his eye upon him. He will come to a bad end, after a career of 
depravity, punctuated by ineffectual birchings, solitary con- 
finement, and the treadmill, But there is happily a birdsnester of 
a different stamp altogether, upon whose conscious ear there never 
falls the accusing plaint of the robin or the lament of the plundered 
song thrush. ‘The flycatcher builds fearlessly in his trellis ; the 
very oriole might trust her eggs within his reach. No bird that 
flies will find an enemy in him. He delights to watch and not to 
plunder ; he finds his pleasure among the living rather than the 
dead. The tenants of the tangled coppice are yeomen of his 
manor; he is proud to reckon on his list of friends a score of 
singers 
Whose household words are songs in n.any keys, 
Sweeter than instrument of man e’er caught ; 
Whose habitations in the tree tops even 
Are half-way houses on the road to heaven. 
—From the Dazly News. 
Short Papers and Notes. 
Lighthouse Flluminants. 
% R. J. Wigham, M.R.1.A., recently delivered a lecture on 
# =the above to the Belfast Natural History and Philoso- 
phical Society. The great gas lighthouse lights with 
which his name is identified, especially those recently 
erected at New Island in Belfast Lough and at Tory 
Island, were exhibited in actual operation, and compared with the 
