The Zoologist— Apeil, 1873. 3489 



consideraUe distance to tlieir homes, after having been carried away shut up 

 in baskets, that I can hardly disbelieve them, though these stories arc dis- 

 believed by some persons. Now, as far as I have observed, cats do not 

 possess a very acute sense of smell, and they seem to discover their prey 

 by eyesight and by hearing. This leads me to mention another trifling 

 fact : I sent a riding-horse by railway from Kent via Yarmouth, to Fresh- 

 water Bay, in the Isle of Wight. On the first day that I rode eastward, 

 my horse, when I turned to go home, was very unwilling to return towards 

 his stable, and he several times turned round. This led me to make 

 repeated trials, and every time that I slackened the reins he turned sharply 

 round and began to trot to the eastward by a little north, which was nearly 

 in the direction of his home in Kent. I had ridden this horse daily for 

 several years, and he had never before behaved in this manner. My im- 

 pression was that he somehow knew the direction whence he had been 

 brought. I should state that the last stage from Yarmouth to Freshwater, 

 is almost due south, and along this road he had been ridden by my 

 groom ; but he never once showed any wish to return in this direction. I 

 bad purchased this horse several years before from a gentleman in my 

 own neighbourhood, who had possessed him for a considerable time. 

 Nevertheless it is possible, though far from probable, tliat the horse may 

 have been born in the Isle of Wight. Even if we grant to animals a 

 sense of the points of the compass, of which there is no evidence, how can 

 we account, for instance, for the turtles which formerly congregated in 

 multitudes, only at one season of the year, on the shores of the Isle of 

 Ascension, finding their way to that speck of land in the midst of the great 

 Atlantic Ocean ? — Charles Darwin ; ' Nature ' of March 13. 



Shoi'tearcd Owl iu Nottiughamsliire. — Whilst shooting at Ramsdale, 

 on the 23rd of December, we put up eight of these birds ; we found them 

 in a gorse cover. Is it not unusual to find so many together ? If it had 

 been earlier, one would have thought that they had only just arrived. There 

 are several about the same place now. — J. Whitaker, jun. ; The Cottage, 

 Rainworth, Notts. 



Great Gray Shrike. — A fine old male was killed at Lambly, about the 

 middle of December. The bird was in beautiful plumage. — Id. 



Great Gray Shrike near Kcwhury. — A very fine specimen of the great 

 gray shrike was shot near Newbury on the 21st of November, 1872 : I saw 

 it in the fleslj : I think it was a bird of the year. The great gray shrike 

 is extremely rare in this immediate neighbourhood. — W. H. Herbert; 

 Newbury. 



Supposed Redwing's Eggs.~The eggs which Mr. Whitaker sends are 

 certainly blackbird's : the female bird was probably one of a late brood last 

 year. — E. Newman. 



