2078 The Zoologist — April, 1870, 



three days and nights, swept every seven or ten minutes in a solid 

 mass of green water as high as twenty-five to thirty feet above the 

 parapet of the new pier. The l-2lh, 13lh and 14th were the roughest 

 days I ever recollect in our Lincolnshire marshes : there was a heavy 

 and continuous gale from the east, intense frosts, and frequent snow- 

 storms, during which it was next to impossible to make head against 

 the blast; and in the intervals between the squalls the air was filled 

 with minute particles of frozen snow drifting in dense clouds, and 

 catling the skin like needle-points, while with every increased gust 

 huge columns of this fine snow-dust were whirled aloft and went 

 careering across the bleak plains, like the sand-columns of the doserl, 

 or the fabled genii of an easlern lale. On the night of the Slst there 

 was an extraordinary high and destructive tide, doing more in one 

 night than the accumulated efforts of ten years, to injure and encroach 

 upon the coasts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Fortunately it was 

 a neap tide, otherwise the damage would have been fearful. 'J'iiis 

 severe weather drove many large Hocks of wild-fowl into the llumber, 

 including swan, brent geese, scoters, scaup and tufted ducks, shiel- 

 drake, wigeon, divers, gulls, &c. 



Gohieneyc. — February 10. One of my men gave me a fine old male 

 goldeneye, taken at dayliglil this morning on our main drain. The 

 drain was frozen ihrungh nearly to liie bottom and the water riuming 

 over the ice surface : this ice prevented the duck from diving, and, as 

 the man said, it was in no hurry to take wing, giving him time to 

 knock it over with a clod. A female of this species shot on one of the 

 open drains in the maisli on the r2i,h, had in the stomach a few shells 

 of Physa fonlinalis, and a mass, apparently, of vegetable matter: on 

 dissolving this, however, in water, and carefully examining the frag- 

 ments under the microscope, I found it consisted almost entirely of the 

 remains of water-larvai of some Neuropterous insects, the small por- 

 tions of vegetable fibre iiaving probably been swallowed with them. 

 I am unable to give the species of insect these belong to, but the outer 

 coat in some is peculiarly barred and streaked with dark stripes. 

 This agrees with what Macgillivray says of this duck, that their food 

 consists principally of the larvae of water insects. The goldeneye is 

 not common on this coast, very rarely falling to our gunners, and 

 I seldom sec them in the local game-shops. 



Wood Piijeon. — February 10. Returning home this evening down 

 the " beck," from looking after the wild ducks, I stood for a short 

 time at the corner of a plantation where the wood pigeons usually 



