3556 The Zoologist — June, 1873. 



lower zone and the less lofty forms of vegetation, nothing around 

 their stems except sere and yellow bracken, and no tree contesting 

 their high place, until we came across a wood of beeches, whose 

 foliage, red and yellow with autumn, afforded a brilliant and pleasing 

 contrast to the sombre green of the above. Before we reached 

 this spot, however, in blackened stumps and leafless stems we saw 

 only too evident traces of the fire that lasted for many days, 

 raging in this forest in the month of September, 1866. A driving 

 mountain mist hid the opposite wooded slopes from our view, and 

 further on the trunks of the firs for a considerable distance were 

 swathed with a spreading olive-green lichen (Sticta pulmonaria). 

 The posting-house, close to the summit of the pass termed the 

 Foci, is a dreary-looking building, not that it is siluate on a de- 

 solate waste mountain height, but the lonely forests in which it is 

 embosomed render it quite as lonesome. The descent once com- 

 menced, with its turns and windings, is very rapid, and then the 

 wild valley of the Gravona is entered, and pursued for a consider- 

 able distance, forming the concluding portion of the journey to 



Ajaccio. 



F. A. Walker. 



(To be continued.) 



Ornilhological Notes from North Lincolnshire. 

 By John Cordeacx, Esq. 



(Continued from S. S. 3405.) 



Makch to May, 1873. 



Marsh Titmouse. — March 5. This species has been most nume- 

 rous during the past winter, and I have observed it much more 

 frequently than the usually far more common coal titmouse. 



Scaup. — March 5. A flock of these ducks off the creek, males 

 and females in pairs. 



Birds on the Flats. — March 19. This morning there were near 

 the month of our creek a considerable collection of shore-birds: 

 within the space of a few yards I noticed a magnificent old full- 

 plumaged great blackbacked gull, four mature common gulls, some 

 gray plover, dunlin and ringed plover, many curlew, hooded crows, 

 and single female wild duck. 



Starling. — March 18. Large flocks, thousands together, in the 

 coast marshes. They have commenced their spring evolutions. 



