184 Northern News. 



Spiders, Mites, Ticks and Centipedes) Injurious to Man/ and 

 is by S. Hirst (60 pp., 6d.). All three are well illustrated, 

 the last having twenty-six text figures and three plates. The 

 British Museum is certainly doing good work in publishing 

 these useful monographs so cheaply. 



KING OF FISHERS. 



O ! blue bird of Yore, 'mid its sallows galore, 



What time the bare wythes are whip wandy ; 

 A rainbow you make as wet diamonds you shake 



From the penns that endue you a dandy ; 

 But if only you knew, as flash ! by me you flew, 



What thoughts you inspire — yet, No, 

 You act on a need all amoral, no meed 



Save exist and subsist — be it so. 

 A minnow's live inch you spear on the lynch, 



Of a bank, or weir's bollard green-moss'd ; 

 Your cravings so say it, and straightway you slay it — 



Your daring the rubicon crossed ; 

 For nature recks naught of a human law taught ; 



As with your gaunt fere the grue heron. 

 Nor Reason may spean from its trick of rapine, 



Its purpose a new brood to spur on. 

 We, therefore, condone, since " for each scale its bone ; " 



Low, food for the Higher, by venvil, not grace, 

 So, Kingfisher, you ; the true " Bolt from the blue "— 



Thy cache of globes glossy, hatched, plead well your case. 



April 14th, 1917. F. Arnold Lees.* 



We learn from the press that at the Annual Meeting of the Zoological 

 Society recently, it was stated that the total number of animals had been 

 very greatly reduced, partly because the large animals that had died during 

 the war had not been replaced, and partly because many animals which 

 could be replaced in normal times had been destroyed. There was a 

 corresponding reduction in the consumption of food, and the principle 

 had been adopted of using only food unsuitale for human consumption. 

 At least six of the penguins have recently died as a result, it is said, of 

 the abnormally damp and protracted winter. 



It has remained for an American weekly paper to distinguish the 

 difference between birds and birds. It was like this : A young woman 

 entered a bookshop in Chicago and asked the help of the clerk in selecting 

 suitable reading. She especially desired some native American fiction, 

 she said. " Why not try Allen's ' Kentucky Cardinal ' ? " said the sales- 

 man, taking a copy of the book off the shelf. " That's a very popular 

 book." " No ; I don't think I care for those theological stories," said 

 the lady. " But this cardinal was a bird ! " "I am not interested in 

 the scandals of his private life," replied the young woman, and out she 

 walked. 



* In The Yorkshire Post. 



Naturalist, 



