NOTES AND QUERIES. 449 
whether the form occurring in Japan is P. cembra sibirica or not. 
It may be useful to remark that Prof. Schubeler (‘ Die Pflanzen- 
welt Norwegens,’ Christiania, 1875, p. 154) characterizes the 
seeds of the two forms (or species?) as follows :—P. sibirica 
having the seed sooty brown in colour, and rather attenuated in 
shape at one end, one hundred seeds weighing 24°75 grms. 
while those of P. cembra typica are light brown, oval or nearly 
globular, one hundred seeds weighing 39°10 grms. There are 
consequently three questions for the resident field ornithologists 
of Japan to solve: (1) Are the bills of the Nutcrackers residing 
in Japan normally and on the average shorter than the bills of 
the birds residing on the Asiatic main-land? (2) What kind of 
seed or nut forms the principal food of the Nutcracker in Japan ? 
(3) Are the seeds of Pinus cembra in Japan encased in a harder 
shell than those from Siberia ? 
[Here follows a Table of Measurements of the specimens in the U.S. 
National Museum above referred to. 
So long ago as 1845 the late Mr. W. R. Fisher discussed in this 
Journal the supposed existence of two species or varieties of Nutcracker. 
See Zool. 1845. p. 1073.—Ep.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 

MAMMALIA. 
White Weasel in the New Forest.—On the 16th of October last I © 
saw a perfectly white Weasel, which had been caught a few days previously 
by a man who was carting fagots from the Forest. He had observed it in 
the fagot-stack, and would have caught it alive, but was afraid of its bite. 
It proved to be a male, and a perfect albino, with pink eyes. Length, from 
head to tip of tail, 10 inches, of which the tail measured 24 inches; weight 
exactly 3 ounces. Its shorter tail, and lacking the black tip,—if not its 
comparatively small size,—at once distinguished it from the Stoat, but, 
though wanting in bulk, it was not deficient in the characteristic odour of | 
its kind. The tail appeared, in proportion to its size, to be more bushy 
than that of the Stoat, and the roots of the hair had a slight trace of the 
brown hue of the summer pelage, though not conspicuous, the rest of the 
fur being perfectly white. Is it a fact that albinos are more or less deaf ? 
—G. B. Corgis (Ringwood, Hants). [We should say not.—Ep.] 
