Tue Zootocist—Avueust, 1872. $185 
white, because the majority of our white eggs are speckled or blotched with 
reddish or rust-coloured spots, which perhaps show better on white wool— 
Henry Reeks. 
Death of Adjutants, Kites and Crows in a Cyclone.—I arrived at 
Calcutta on the 11th of January, 1865, and, when driving past the 
Government House at about five o'clock on the evening of the following 
day, I observed nearly a dozen adjutants perched on the roof. A few can 
always be seen on any evening at the same place, well on into the cold 
weather, although there are very few after the Ist of January. On the 
morning after the cyclone which passed over Calcutta during the night 
between the 1st and 2nd of November, 1867, I observed at least a score 
of dead adjutants between the cathedral in Chowringhee and Tank-square. 
On that occasion the dead kites and crows lay so thick on the roads and in 
the compounds, that they were removed in cart-loads, and hundreds of 
thousands of them must have been killed in Calcutta and the district over 
which the storm passed. At the bottom of Harrington-street, in Chow- 
ringhee, there is a tank called Elliott’s Tank, round which are a few old 
peepul trees. I counted above two hundred kites and crows lying dead 
below these trees, and amongst them several adjutants. This cyclone took 
place after a fortnight of dry, hot weather, when everyone thought the rains 
had ceased, and when the adjutants are nearly all out of the city. The 
great roosting-place of the adjutants in Calcutta is on the top of Government 
House, which presents a long outline of high, isolated standing room for 
them; and on any evening during the rains they may be seen, like sentries, 
standing at regular distances all round it. They also frequent the old 
burying-place at the top of Park-street in great numbers; and it is indeed a 
melancholy sight on a gloomy evening in the rains to enter the precincts of 
that dreary place. The tombs are nearly all huge tenements of brick and 
mortar, going fast to decay, and covered with young peepul trees, which 
_ grow from their crevices till they split the masonry; and the action of 
the saltpetre causes the plaster to fall off to about six feet from the 
ground, and the bricks to moulder away. Many obelisk-shaped tombs, 
from the one which marks the grave of Sir William Jones (which must be 
about sixty feet high) downwards, are interspersed through the ground, and 
on each an adjutant takes his stand, resting generally on one leg, with his 
head between his shoulders.—J. C. Lyell; Dundee, July 15.— Field.’ 
Honey Buzzard in Suffolk.—On the 13th of June I examined, in Mr. 
Bilson’s shop, at Bury St. Edmunds, a splendid honey buzzard, in the 
flesh, which had been recently shot at Langham, in this county. I could 
not help observing the beauty of the iris, which was small and of the most 
brilliant golden yellow, strongly reminding me of that of the male goldeneye 
duck. Mr. Bilson has since informed me that, on dissection, it proved a 
male bird, but showed no signs of breeding. JI find in my note-book an 
