7420 Birds. 



bird-trays, and placing themselves therein with evident delight, 

 and by their allowing a spectator to approach near enough to theui to 

 watch their merry pranks while driving away their less resolute and 

 pugnacious companions, obliging them to wait beneath for any godsend 

 that may chance to fall to their lot from the master of the tray 

 above. 



William Henry Slaney. 

 Hatton Hall, February 20, 1861. 



[This fact in the life-history of the squirrel is not quite new, as the following^ queries 

 by Rusticus of Godalniing will show. " ' They sleep a great part of the winter, like 

 the alpine mouse, and very soiindely, for I have seene when no noise of hunters could 

 awake them with al their cries, beating their nests on the outside, and shooting bolts 

 and arrowes thorough it, vntil it were pulled assunder, wherein many limes they are 

 found killed before they be awaked.' The preceding paragraph, taken from Topsell's 

 'History of Four-footed Beasts,' records a faith in the torpidity of the squirrel, which, 

 from the lime of Aristotle, has never been disturbed. It is, therefore, both of venerable 

 antiquity and of universal acceptation. Now I am sorely perplexed whether to give 

 you an account of this torpidity on the authority of authors, or to skip it altogether, or 

 to attack it tooth and nail. I will take a middle course, and recite under the fashion 

 of queries a few doubts that have occurred to me. We commonly see squirrels every 

 inonth in the year — on the shortest day equally with the longest ; when, therefore, 

 does torpidity begin, and when does it end ? Again, the hoarding of provender ; that 

 fact is patent : what is the object ? — is it devoured during torpidity ? Are not these 

 hoards rather an evidence that during the winter the squirrels are not only awake, but 

 hungry? Again squirrels migrate: in this island we see it in a small degree, and 

 rather as an exception than a rule ; but on the continents of Europe and America it is 

 the rule. Vast multitudes move southwards at the approach of winter, northwards at 

 the approach of summer ; this is perfectly notorious : why should not squirrels become 

 torpid in New York and Massachusetts ? — why should they enter Florida bef ire 

 assuming torjiidily ? — why should the squirrels of Russia pass the Balkan before they 

 doze? I believe a squirrel may sleep more soundly on a cold frosty night than a 

 house-dog stretched before a comfortable fire, but I have yet to learn the exact point where 

 sleep ends and torpidity begins. If torpidity means a sleep enduring for weeks, or 

 even days, I still doubt whether there is positive evidence of it among our squirrels.'' 

 — Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 329]. 



Hints which may be useful to Egg Collectors. , 



By Stephen Stone, Esq. 



It is to be regretted that while in Mr. Newton's admirable ])aper on 

 collecting and preserving eggs (Zool. 7189) the student is fully 

 instructed how to proceed in order to avoid breakage in blowing, 

 packing, and in the transmission of specimens from one correspondent 



