176 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 



Mr. Aborn informs me that, as far as lie knows, few, if any, pieces 

 of flint have been found scattered on the surface of Dartmoor. 



I am, &c,, 



C. BARHAM. 



Truro, October 22nd, 1866. 



Ornithology. 

 To the Editor. 

 Sir, 



Knowing that there is a convenient corner of the Journal 

 for little scraps of observation in Natural History, Antiquities, and 

 the other matters embraced by the Cornwall Institution, I trouble 

 you with the following memorandum of the bird life of the now 

 closing summer. 



On the 3rd of July last, a brood of five fully fledged black- 

 birds left a nest in my garden, from which the parent birds had 

 already sent into the wide world two families, each of four young 

 ones, this season. I did not make a note of the date of the first 

 exodus, but I did note that there was a fresh laid egg in the nest 

 within two days after the cradle was clear of its first inmates. I 

 feared this second brood would come to grief, finding one morning 

 a male blackbird, with bright yellow bill, lying stretched on the 

 grass, victimised, no doubt, by our capital mouser — perhaps slain 

 as an interloper, for such he proved to be. 



My fondness for these epitomes of concentrated muscular 

 energy, and of life, joy, and song, is very great ; but it was all 

 needed to bear, with any good humour, the inroads made on our 

 fruit by these successive generations ; which seemed — the whole 

 baker's dozen, I believe — to have a most abiding attachment to 

 their birthplace. 



Such prolific doings may not be very unusual, but they are 

 new to the experience of, 



Yours, &c., 



AN OLD BIRDNESTER. 

 Truro, October 22nd, 1866. 



NETHERTON, printer, TRURO. 



