JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 67 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 
Read before the Hamilton Scientific Association, Feb. 2st, 1900. 
BY WM. YATES, ESQ. 
We have had some very cold nights of late, frequently 5 or 6 
below zero, but winter is gliding by. One day this month I think 
the 8th er 9th the thermometer showed 54 degrees and many hive 
bees came out of their winter quarters and numbers of the hymenop- 
terous honey gatherers got death chills by alighting on snow 
patches on the ground near the hives, 
One of my neighbors says he lately found a bee tree in the 
wild woods ; the snow tracks at the foot of the tree showed that the 
bee stores were being stolen by red squirrels as there were pieces of 
broken comb fallen about the tree base. There was a crack in the 
tree bole gnawed for enlargement by the squirrels. 
True to the record the horned larks returned here on the first 
February thaw, after an absence of three months or more. They 
are now to be seen (and heard) on the highways and margins of 
stubble fields, enlivening the scene in groups of eight or nine, 
showing, as Emerson writes : 
‘Far reaching concords of astronomy, 
Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds.” 
One of my neighbors says he has been lately petting a hairy - 
woodpecker—P. Villosus. It lives in the hollow stem of an old 
apple tree near to his house. He hangs on the tree a piece of beef 
bone with some of the fat meat left on. 
The bird, he says, comes out of retirement once in two or three 
days and gorges itself on the food store, goes back into the vegea- 
tive dark cave of Adullam, and is seen outside no more until hun- 
ger compels or suggests another outcoming. 
Many blue jays come about almost daily to eat the seeds of 
frozen apples left in a few instances scattered on the leafless branches. 
Mr F. Bowles, a New England naturalist, says (and it is true) that 
