196 



NEWS FROM THE MAGAZINES. 



The Museum News (Brooklyn) for March, contains an interesting note 

 on the black rat, and its origin. 



Mr. C. Mosley gives his ' Impressions of Hagenbeck's Zoological Gar- 

 dens ' in The Animals' Friend for May. 



Part IV. of Cassell's Nature Book contains a charming object lesson on 

 ' The Romance of a River,' by the late Joseph Lomas. 



Mr. E. A. Martin has some notes on Ponds in Agricultural Districts, 

 in the Journal of the Board of Agriculture, Vol. XIX., No. i. 



Some brief notes on ' Lepidoptera at Grassington in 191 1 ' and ' Col- 

 lecting in Westmorland,' appear in The Entomologist for May. 



The Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society (Vol. XXVII.,. 

 Part i), contains papers on the Panama Canal, the Sudan, and northern 

 Persia. 



In Volume XI., part 2, of Records of the Past (Washington, D.C.), Mrs. 

 Adelaide Curtiss has an admirably illustrated paper on ' The Venerable 

 City of York.' 



In The Zoologist (No. 850) Mr. J. M. Charlton describes the birds of 

 south-east Northumberland, and Mr. E. B. Dunlop has a lengthy paper 

 on the Large Larch Sawfiy. 



A new pose for nurses. In the Animals' Friend (Vol. XVIII, No. 7) is 

 a photograph of a bird standing on the chest of a sleeping baby : it is 

 entitled ' The Bird as Nurse.' 



We are agreeably surprised to find the editors of British Birds, in the 

 May issue, state that ' to regain a former breeding species, or to gain a new 

 one, is of far greater interest and value than to discover a new " straggler." ' 



In The New Phytologist (Vol. XL, No. 4), Mr. H. Hamshaw Thomas 

 has a useful paper ' On some methods in Palaeobotany,' and Mr. J. R. 

 Weir gives a ' Review of the Characteristics of the Uredineae,' a subject 

 dealt with by R. H. Philip recently in The Naturalist, though his paper 

 does not appear in Mr. Weir's bibliography. 



According to the local press ' a seal was caught in the Grimsby fish- 

 dock recently. It is supposed to have floated from the Arctic regions on 

 an ice-floe which was melted in the warmer waters of the North Sea. 

 Thence it must have got into the muddy waters of the Humber.' We 

 suppose it could not have come from the Wash, a few miles away, -wliere 

 seals breed in great numbers ? 



In The Zoologist for May Messrs. L. E. Hope and D. L. Thorpe con- 

 tribute natural history notes in the Carlisle district during 191 1. There 

 is also a record of Trichoniscoides sarsi, a wood louse new to Britain, found 

 under small stones on the clay cliffs near Whitby. Previously it has only 

 been recorded for the Christiania district. There is likewise a record, 

 apparently the first, of the Whiskered Bat in Westmorland. 



In the Museums Journal for May, Dr. H. S. Harrison gives ' Notes on 

 one kind of Museum,' in which he states that ' The chief function of a 

 museum is the education of its curator, and the instruction conveyed to 

 others is incidental.' He also informs us that ' a satisfied curator, like 

 a finished museum, is damned and done for.' We know now the origin 

 of the saying that ' he is well paid who is well satisfied.' Curators are 

 never satisfied. In the same journal Mr. T. Sheppard has a paper on a 

 Fisheries and Shipping Museum, which was read at the Stockport Con- 

 ference of Museum curators on April 25th. Apparently this subject was 

 accepted in place of ' Museums versus Refuse Destructors,' which was 

 originally suggested. 



Naturalist, 



