408 Northern News. 
‘The Zoo in your own home’ (Advert in the ‘ Weekly Wisdom’). 
Uncle Westell knows of a chicken that ‘ ¢afs at the back door with tts foot 
every morning to let the lady of the house know that it is breakfast time.’ 
What an interesting photograph this ‘knocker-up’ would make ! 
Amongst the ‘new arrivals’ in an American dealers list we notice 
‘too fine specimens of He/7x’ from Europe. He also has an ‘enormous 
stock in marine univalves and bivalves.’ We'll gurantee many of our brother 
conchologists at Billingsgate can equal his ‘enormous stock.’ 
‘To the majority of people the cosmopolitan sparrow, etc., constitute 
practically the whole of London's feathered folk, but fo those possessing the 
seeing eye a greatly increased avi-fauna is presented. ... / have been 
myself amazed at the variety of feathered folk to be met with.’ Uncle 
Westell in ‘The Animal World.’ 
Mr. H. S. Toms, of the Brighton Museum, sends us a reprint of an 
interesting paper on ‘ Pigmy Flint Implements found near Brighton.’ We 
were relieved to find that Mr. Toms applies the word ‘Pigmy’ to the 
implements, and not to the people who made them. As is usual in these 
‘pigmy ’ papers, the illustrations are given in a reduced scale, which makes 
the pigmies appear more pigmy still. 
We have received from Messrs. Marion & Co., 22 and 23 Soho Square, W., 
an exhaustive ‘Catatogue of Photographic Apparatus and Materials,’ to 
which we have pleasure in drawing the attention of our readers who are 
interested in photography. It contains nearly 200 pages, enumerates some 
thousands of appliances, etc., and is well illustrated. Amateur and pro- 
fessional alike will find much of value in this list. 
In the ‘ Mineralogical Magazine’ (No. 67), Mr. L. J. Spencer, of the 
British Museum, gives ‘a (fourth) list of new mineral names.’ The first in 
the list is ‘ Aegirine-hedenbergite,’ and the last ‘ Zeyringite,’ and these are 
fair samples of the names which occupy some twenty pages, Amongst 
them are Argento-algodonite, Chlormanganokalite, Hibschite, Kassitero- 
lamprit, Metachalcophyllite, Silicomagnesiofluorite, Titaneisenglimmer, and 
Tschernichewite. The mineralogists have our sympathy. We hope they 
do not try to discuss these new names after an anniversary dinner. 
We thought there were enough of the ‘talky-talky’ books on birds. But 
we learn from a recent writer that ‘the great public is awaiting the publication 
of a book on British Birds,’ ‘written in plain language,’ which will be 
‘pleasant to read,’ and enable ‘ all readers to icentifs_ for themselves all the 
birds.’ He is therefore undertaking this ‘very difficult though congenial 
task.’ During the past two or three years we have noticed some dozens of 
books, each of which proposed to have all the characters for which ‘the 
great public’ is said to be in such need, and each of which is about the 
same value as that now being issued in penny numbers by Mr. Audubon 
Cuvier Robinson. 
Under the heading ‘An unrecorded British Mammal’? a contemporary has 
a note on some‘ mole-tailed rats,’ which, ‘about twenty years ago,’ over- 
ran Sunk Island, at the mouth of the Humber. ‘The ground was under- 
mined by them and farm buildings had to be abandoned.’ The editor, who is 
oblivious of the fact that someone may be ‘pulling his leg,’ and is ever ready 
with an explanation for anything under the sun, suggests that the account 
given might very well refer to the lemming, an animal which is sometimes 
disastrously abundant in Norway, whence it is conceivable that it might 
have been brought on shipboard to the mouth of the Humber.’ There are 
no B.E.N.A.’s on Sunk Island, but a little local enquiry would have informed 
the editor that the animals in question were kangaroos, which reached 
Sunk Island by clinging to the propellor of a steamer bringing frozen 
rabbits to Hull. They were eventually exterminated by poisoned tobacco 
being strewn about on the ground. The kangaroos collected this, put 
it into their pouches, and died. As proof of this there is a skeleton of a 
kangaroo in the Hull Museum. 
Naturalist 
