The Zoologist— Febhuakv, 1871. 2463 



will be read by many with much interest, more especially as birds 

 taken by the same means have been found to be perfectly uninjured, 

 and have been transferred to the Zoological Gardens and to Mr. 

 Guruey's aviaries at Catton; for instance, owls, larks, golden and 

 gray plovers, curlews, redshanks, bartailed godwits, woodcocks, 

 knots, dunlins, oystercatchers, storm petrels, shellducks, wild ducks, 

 wigeons, teal, kittiwakes, and blackheaded, common, herring and 

 great blackbacked gulls. The plan was practised at Lynn by Mr. 

 F. J. Cresswell and others, and is described as follows : — 



" On the flat shores of the Wash, at the mouth of the estuary, long nets 

 some six or seven feet deep, are stretched upright on poles, and the birds 

 in their nocturnal flight strike the nets, and, becoming entangled in the 

 meshes, are taken alive in the morning. Some, however, are occasionally 

 drowned should the tide rise higher than is expected or the nets be placed 

 beyond a certain level on the ooze. From Mr. J. H. Gurney, juu., who in 

 December, 1862, spent a night on board Mr. CressweU's yacht, with the 

 view of visiting the nets in the early morning, I learn that a dark night in 

 mid- winter is reckoned the best time for netting, and the north side of the 

 Wash is considered most favourable. The night should be very dark and 

 still, as the birds would avoid the nets if visible at any distance, and in 

 stormy weather the poles are liable to be blown down, or even washed away. 

 The meshes are large, so that various gulls and wild-fowl are caught by them, 

 but the smaller TriugiB and even larks are taken in some quantities, being 

 entangled by their struggles. I have heard of as many as sixty dunlins 

 having been secured at one haul, and on one occasion as many as one 

 hundred and forty head, principally sea-gulls. Nocturnal migrants, as well 

 as the ordinary shore birds of the neighbourhood would seem to meet with 



a like fate, judging from the species which are occasionally captured." 



P. 370. 



This statement is as wonderful as it is evidently truthful. What 

 an illustration of the axiom that " truth is strange, stranger than 

 fiction!" Who would have dared to imagine an atmosphere of 

 diurnal birds floating over the ocean in the dark, dead, silent, still 

 nights of winter .? Yet so it is : and that which in the garb of 

 fiction, or of hypothesis, would find small credence, when stated in 

 the beautiful simplicity of truth is all-convincing; it will not be 

 disputed. What becomes of the hypothesis that day-feeding birds 

 fly only by day ? What becomes of fixing migratory seasons ? 

 What laws can we lay down by which Nature shall be bound ? 

 One more passage remains that I cannot forbear quoting : it is 



