Yorkshire Naturalists' Union : Vertebrate Section. 133 



pointed out that such eggs are regularly taken for food in 

 Continental countries, particularly Holland, and that Black- 

 headed Gulls' eggs, when mistakenly eaten for Plovers' eggs in 

 England, were counted great delicacies. The proposition was 

 unanimously accepted, and the members present offered to 

 place their services at the disposal of Lord Devonport should 

 he require suggestions or advice as to the best method of collect- 

 ing and distributing the eggs. 



Prof. Garstang, M.A., D.Sc, presided at the ordinary meeting 

 of the Section, at which Messrs. W. Denison Roebuck, M.Sc, 

 and J. F. Musham, the chairman and convener respectively, 

 reported that the Mammals, Amphibians, Reptiles and Fishes 

 Committee had been revived at the annual meeting of the 

 Union, at Selby. 



At their invitation many specimens of the smaller mammals 

 were exhibited. These included a variety of the Water Shrew, 

 formerly known as the ' Eared Shrew,' dug from the garden of 

 Mr. J. W. Taylor, M.Sc, Horsforth, in November. Except 

 for a small artificial pond in the garden, the nearest water is 

 some distance away. Mr. Booth brought a melanic water vole 

 sent by Mr. T. Roose, who obtained it from a swamp at Hazle- 

 wood, near Bolton Abbey. For 70 or 80 years a colony of voles 

 of this variety has been known to exist there, and wrongly 

 supposed by many to be Old English Black Rats. Unfor- 

 tunately for the animals, the swamp has recently been drained. 



Many accounts of the sufferings of birds during the pro- 

 tracted frost were given ; in various parts of the county 

 grouse have been driven from the moors to the valleys. 



With a nestling Hoatzin (South America) as a model, 

 Prof. Garstang offered some notes on Nestlings and on the 

 peculiarities of nestling plumage. The Hoatzin nests in the 

 trees over swamp and water. The nestlings have sparse, 

 downy tracts, and as soon as they are hatched they leave the 

 nest, and by beak, claws and nails on the wing, climb about 

 the trees. Anatomists had suggested this as evidence that 

 birds had evolved from lower animals, and that the very 

 earliest forms built their nests in trees. Prof. Garstang, who 

 believed the earliest forms were ground nesters, exhibited 

 down from various nestlings, and traced the evolution of a 

 feather from the scale of a Lizard, through the extinct 

 Archaeopteryx and other early birds, to the down of a 

 modern nestling. Those of the most ancient and lowest 

 forms, such as the struthious birds, the Tinamons and 

 a genus of Sand Grouse, were longitudinally striped. In 

 modern ducklings there is noticeable a distinct shaft with many 

 horizontal or crossed filaments ; domestic fowl chicks and young 

 game-birds have this shaft less discernible, and the horizontal 

 filaments are fewer ; but in young terns the shaft and horizontal 



1917 April 1. 



