4i8 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



TERRITORY IX BIRD LIFE. 



This question has recently received much prominence among orni- 

 thologists, and various theories have been put forward with a view to 

 drawing up a code of rules by which a bird is supposed to be governed 

 Avhen fighting for its own little patch of nesting ground. No doubt every 

 rule has its exceptions, and exceptions may prove the rule, but my 

 ■experience this year, which I admit is due to exceptional circumstances, 

 seems to show that, in at any rate two species, the hunger for territory 

 may give place to force majeure under stress of necessity. My house is 

 surrounded by grass fields which were bounded by tall hedges of the old 

 type, and sheltered many Blackbirds and Thrushes. Early in April 

 this year the hedges were chopped down, and bare stumps only were left. 

 In consequence, the dispossessed Blackbirds and Thrushes crowded into 

 the garden, about loo yards long and 40 to 50 wide. I counted at one 

 time nests of 7 Thrushes and 6 Blackbirds with eggs and young, and two 

 Thrushes had nests, one with eggs and one with young, exactly 12 feet 

 apart. The only sign of territorial acquisition was an occasional brace of 

 Blackbirds ,^ fighting on the lawn, but the same might have been seen 

 in any previous year. How were the boimdaries of each bird's territory, 

 if such there were, adjusted w-ithout internecine combats ? Apparently 

 all resigned themselves to the inevitable and settled down to laread in 

 this small crowded area, very much to the detriment of the fruit crops. 

 The inference seems to be that given sufficient feeding ground the instinct 

 of territorial acquisitiveness may be modified or lost. In the present 

 instance the original feeding grounds wei'e intact and accessible by a 

 slightly longer flight than in previous years. — E. W. Wade. 



— : o : — 



OLD PAVING STONES FROM ICELAND? A QUESTION FOR 

 HULL GEOLOGISTS. 



William Harrison's racy ' Description of England,' first published as 

 part of ' Holinshed's Chronicles ' in 1577, of which I have a modernized 

 reprint entitled ' Elizabethan England,' published some thirty years ago 

 in Scott's ' Camelot Series,' contains some interesting old information 

 for the geologist, particularly in the chapters ' Of Sundry Minerals and 

 Metals ' (Chap. XII. of my reprint) and ' Of Quarries of Stone for Build- 

 ing ' (Chap. XVIII. of reprint). In the last-mentioned chapter, after 

 reviewing our home-resources, the patriotic Harrison launches into a 

 characteristic tirade (such as is still habitual to us) against the fashion 

 of using foreign stones instead of English : — ' So that 1 think no nation 

 can have more excellent and greater diversity of stuff for building than 

 we may have in England, if ourselves could so like of it. But such, 

 alas ' is our nature, that not our own, but other men's, do most of all 

 delight us ' ; — and then he cites several examples of this bad fashion, 

 and goes on : — ' Howbeit for all this we must fetch them still from far, 

 as did the Hull men their stones out of Iceland, wherewith thev paved their 

 town for want of the like in England ; or, as Sir Thomas Gresham did 

 when he bought the stones in Flanders wherewith he paved the Burse. 

 But as he will answer (peradventure) that he bargained for the whole 

 mould and substance of his workmanship in Flanders, so the Hullanders 

 or Hull men will say how that stock-fish is light loading, and therefore 

 they did balance their vessels with these Iceland stones to keep them 

 from turning over in their so tedious a voyage.' 



Is there any trace remaining of these ' stones out of Iceland ' in the 

 paving of the older streets in Hull? Presumably the paving would be 

 in the form of ' cobbles,' and the Icelandic rocks would be basalts of 

 sorts. But ' cobbles ' of basaltic jock, washed out of Glacial drifts, arc 

 abundant on the Yorkshire coast, and are numerous in all old cobbled 

 pavements in the East Riding, most of the stones for this kind of paving 



Naturalist 



