272 



NORTHERN NEWS. 



We notice that Major A. R. Dwerryhouse, D.Sc, has been elected 

 President of the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club. 



A fine bust of William Smith, 'The Father of English Geology,' has 

 been purchased for the Museum at Hull. It was formerly in the possession 

 of the late Sir Andrew Ramsay. 



The Twenty-sixth Annual Report of the Royal Society for the Protection 

 of Birds has been received. It describes the way in which bird protection 

 has been affected by the war. 



We learn from the press that the caterpillar ' plague, ' which tus 

 wrought havoc on the Caldbeck range of hills in Cumberland, is subsiding. 

 Large quantities of the grub have been destroyed by firing the herbage 

 on the fells, but the rooks, gulls, and starlings, which have been attracted 

 to the place in thousands, have been the greatest factor in reducing the 

 pest. 



The Ninety-fourth Annual Report of the Whitby Literary and Philos- 

 ophical Society contains particulars of a number of valuable additions to 

 the Museum, among which we notice ' Gills of a southern Right Whale,' 

 though if these are ' gills ' the whale must be a ' wrong 'un.' The report 

 contains valuable meterological reports, and though the society is a 

 small one we are glad to see that it is still flourishing. 



Punch says the most satisfactory test to distinguish edible from 

 poisonous fungi is to look for them. If you find them they are likely 

 to be poisonous. If they have been already gathered they were probably 

 edible. This is nearly as good as the plan recommended by a well-known 

 Yorkshire mycologist, whose advice was ' try them on the Missis ; if she 

 lives, they are all right : if she doesn't, they are poisonous.' 



The following is possibly a joke, so we must not quibble at the fact 

 that no neolithic man could possibly have stoned a mastodon : — 

 In Days of Yore. 

 An irate Neolithic man, 

 His anger to assuage, 

 Once stoned a peaceful mastodon — 

 ('Twas in the Stony Age). 



His simply-costumed lady-love, 



Who dearly loved to pun, 

 Remarked with sparlding, roguish eyes. 



" What has the mastodon ? " — Chaparral. 

 We take the following from the Yorkshire Weekly Post : — A Bold 

 Resolve. — "Mr. S. L. Mosley, F.E.S., Naturalist to the Huddersfield 

 Technical College, is an enthusiast of no mean order. In the ' Hudders- 

 field Examiner,' he writes : — ' Lately, in connection with my museum 

 work, I have had occasion to extend my knowledge of the birds of foreign 

 countries. I have been so struck with the exquisite beauty and variety, 

 and with the many forms so entirely different from anything we have in 

 this country, that I have resolved to paint the likeness of every kind of 

 bird in the world.' The order appears somewhat a large one for a gentle- 

 man, who, on his own admission, ha's attained to the patriarch's three 

 score years and ten, but the spirit that can calmly contemplate such a 

 task is certainly to be commended. We might suggest to Mr. Mosley as 

 a sequel to his new work, a series of coloured plates of the Beetles of the 

 world, with their caterpillars, arranged on some simple plan. There are, 

 we believe, about 130,000 known species, and their identification is often 

 extremely difficult from the existing books." As the British Museum hand 

 list of birds, by the late R. Bowdler Sharpe, published some little time ago, 

 contains about 18,500 species of birds other than those in the British list, 

 we can only hope that Mr.. Mosley will be enjoying good health when his 

 labours in that direction are completed. 



Naturalist, 



