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TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 109 
Hawks, by preference, make sickly birds their quarry. In Norfolk there is no 
moor game, and therefore no grouse disease. But the game-preservers of the 
county believe that their stock of pheasants and partridges is materially increased 
by the destruction of everything which they are pleased to call vermin. Now 
the abundance of game has but little to do with the scarcity of birds of prey, and 
in some foreign countries the existence of numerous birds of prey is a pledge of the 
lentifulness of game. Owls are undoubtedly the game-preserver’s best friends. 
Fis most serious foe is the rat, and owls consume more rats and mice than any 
other description of food, an assertion proved by the investigations of Dr. Altum 
(Journ. fiir Orn. 1863, pp. 41-46, 1864, pp. 429-434; Ber. xiv. Versamml. D. O. G. 
pp. 30-34, and Zool. Gart. 1867, pp. 262-266) and others. So with regard to 
polecats, stoats, and weasels. With reference to sea-fowl, a certain amount of 
sentiment may be confessed. No animals are so cruelly persecuted. At the 
breeding-season they come to our shores, throwing aside their wary and suspicious 
habits, and sometimes settling far inland. No one has ever complained of them as 
injurious, as raising the price of herrings, sprats, or oysters. Yet excursion trains 
convey the “sportsmen” of London and Lancashire to the Isle of Wight and 
Flamborough Head, for the purpose of destroying these harmless birds. Each bird 
shot was a parent, and its young were thus exposed to death from hunger. Could 
men blaze away hour after hour at those wretched birds without being morally the 
worse for it? We thank God that we are not as Spaniards, gloating over the 
brutality of bull-fights, whilst we forget the agony inflicted on thousands of innocent 
birds on our coasts to which that of a dozen horses and bulls in a ring is as nothing. 
The enormous demand for the feathers of sea-fowl by the inodern fashion of ladies’ 
hat plumes has added to this cruel destruction. 
The legislative appointment of a “close time,” to be proclaimed by the local 
authorities, during which the mere carrying of a gun should be an offence, is abso- 
lutely necessary. This plan has been eg es in several countries, including some 
of the most democratic, as shown by the Game Laws of Switzerland, Norway, the 
United States of America, and several British colonies. The question is one wholly 
unconnected with party politics, and it should be so regarded. If the present state 
of things continues much longer, far greater changes will take place with regard to 
the fauna of this country than most persons suspect, and they will be changes for 
which the zoologists of future generations will not thank us. 
On a new Eschara from Cornwall, By C. W. Puacu, A.L.S. 
Eschara verrucosa, Peach.—In 1848 the author obtained this Coral from Lan- 
tivet Bay near Fowey, and at the time gave it a slight examination only, as he left 
that part soon after it was packed up and remained so until a few days ago, when 
it turned up, and on careful examination proves new to the British list. 
Polyzoary buff-coloured, dichotomously branched; branches cylindrical and rough. 
Cells deeply immersed; older ones very much roughened all round by knob-like 
pitted eminences, at times almost covering the cells; the mouth moderately large, 
rounded above this part in the young, with five perforations as if spines had been 
broken off. Lower part of mouth straight. On one side of each cell, a little below 
the lower lip, not always on the same side, is a raised avicularium, perforated on 
the top with a triangular opening, from which springs a gold-coloured bayonet- 
shaped vibraculum. The young cells are raised and smooth. As it differs from all 
the branched British Corals known to the author, he has named it Eschara verru- 
cosa, from its rough appearance. 
Unfortunately it was broken from its attachment; it was, however, quite fresh. 
The fragment is { inch in height, spread of branches about the same, breadth of 
stem and branches about one-tenth of an inch. 
On the Structural Peculiarities of certain Sapindaccous Plants. 
By Professor RapLKorer. 
The ordinary mode of growth of the stem of dicotyledonous plants is by the 
continual addition of a cylindrical layer of tissue between the bark and wood, a 
