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 NOTES AND QUERIES. 



The Birds of Walney Island. — Under this title Mr. W. A. D urn ford 

 has published a pamphlet of twenty pages (to be had of R Griffiths, Church 

 Street, Barnsley), in which a list of 188 species is given. This number 

 strikes us at once as being remarkable; but on reading the Introduction 

 we perceive that the writer has " attempted to embrace every species which, 

 to the best of his belief, has occurred within thirty or forty miles of the 

 borough of Barrow-in-Furness (of which Walney forms a part), so that within 

 these limits he includes a large portion of the Lake district, embracing parts 

 of West Cumberland and Westmoreland, as well as North Lancashire." 

 Under these circumstances it would have been better to have selected a more 

 comprehensive title. Amongst the more remarkable species we find the 

 Spotted Eagle, a specimen of which, picked up dead on the west shore of 

 Waluey in 1875, was examined by Mr. Durnford, who states that "not 

 having been able to ascertain any other circumstances in connection with 

 its occurrence, he does not feel justified in adding it to the list of British- 

 killed specimens." Yet, somewhat inconsistently, he introduces it all the 

 same into his list. Such rarities, also, as the Goshawk, Swallow-tailed Kite, 

 Crested Tit, and some others, are included, on what appears to be rather 

 slender evidence. Mr. Durnford, however, states in his Introduction that 

 his list is subject to correction, which he will be glad to receive, and which 

 may be addressed to him at Tankersley Rectory, near Barnsley. 



Animal Parasites. — Under the name of "tick" two quite distinct 

 animal forms are often confounded. The sbeep-tick or louse, as shepherds 

 call it, found at the roots of the wool on sheep, and which I have often 

 formerly had brought to me under one of those names, is an aberrant form 

 of Hijjpobosca, a genus of dipterous insects, the typical species being the 

 well-known forest-fly. An excellent figure of the sheep-tick will be found 

 in Curtis's ' British Entomology,' pi. 142, under the name of Melophagus 

 ovinus. Ixodes is a genus of the Acarida, a group easily distinguished 

 from the true insects by their having eight legs in the adult state. Six 

 British species of Ixodes are described by Dr. Leach in vol. xi. of the 

 Linnean 'Transactions.' There are probably others not as yet determined. 

 The one best known is the common dog-tick, found in a free state in woods 

 and plantations, and attaching itself not merely to dogs, but to hares, &c, 

 and especially to hedgehogs, which often abound with them, the ticks 

 getting their hold as the animals pass through the close grass. After 

 attachment they soon get gorged with blood, their abdomens swelling to an 

 immense size compared with the insignificant appearance of them previous 

 to attachment. But I can remember no instance of an Ixodes found on a 



