378 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



a dark shade of the natural colour. This bird lived a year in the 

 possession of my correspondent, Mr. Skinner, of River Street, N. — H. A. 

 Macpherson (Carlisle). 



Apparent Bird-tracks by the Sea-Shore.— At a meeting of the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadephia, held on October 3rd, 1882, 

 Mr. Thomas Meehati called attention to what appeared to be the tracks of 

 a three-toed bird in the sand near low water-mark, at Atlantic City. These 

 tracks were of a nature that would be readily recoguised by observers as 

 bird-tracks ; but while thinking of what bird could have caused them, and 

 reflecting on the phenomenon of their being only found on the sand near 

 low water-mark, Mr. Meehan noted on the face of the smooth, receding 

 waves, spots where the water sparkled in the light, and he found this was 

 caused by little riplets as the wavelets passed down over the half-exposed 

 bodies of a small crustacean (Hippa talpoidea), and that the water, in 

 passing over the bodies, made the trifid marks which had been taken for 

 impressions of bird's feet. These little Crustacea take shelter in the sand 

 near low water-mark, and enter head foremost in a perpendicular direction 

 downwards, resting just beneath the surface. The returning wave took 

 some of the surface sand with it, and then the looser portions of the bodies 

 uppermost in the sand were exposed. Often the little creatures would be 

 quite washed out; when recovering themselves, they would rapidly advance 

 in a direction contrary to the retreat of the wave, and would enter the wet 

 sand again as before, their sides being parallel with the shore. Their bodies 

 terminate in a caruncular point which, with the position of the two hind- 

 legs, offer a tridentate obstruction to the sand brought down by the 

 retreating wave, and the water passing round the points made the three 

 toe-like grooves, which resembled a bird's foot from one and a half to two 

 inches long. The Crustacea, in their scrambles for protection beneath the 

 sand, managed to keep at fairly regular distances from each other, and 

 hence there was considerable regularity in the tracks, as if they had really 

 been produced by birds. Although the author of these notes presented 

 them as a trifle, yet it will be at once apparent that they are of great 

 interest. Trifid impressions like these, filled with mud and the deposit 

 then to become solid rock, would puzzle, if not altogether mislead, future 

 observers. — Nature. 



Habits of the Goldfinch and Grey Crow. — I can endorse Mr. 

 Macpherson 's account (p. 337) of the late abundance of the Goldfinch in 

 Oxfordshire, from my own experience in Buckinghamshire, not far from 

 Oxford. They were very plentiful in the "thistle season" of 1882, and 

 I saw them as late as the 7th April last, in some abundance, feeding 

 usually upon the seeds of the large teasel by the stream-sides. When 

 Mr. Whitaker says (p. 337) that " instances of the Grey Crow breeding so 



