July 17, 1891.J 



SCIENCE. 



39 



differpnt meaning. We tramped the marsh, which teemed with 

 other bird life, backvvards and forwards. Twice we flushed a 

 mallard from a nest well fillpd with eggs. One nest, with a clutch 

 of ten, was downed almost as thickly as an eider duck's, with a 

 "welltranapled path like a miniature sheep walk leading from it to 

 the water's edge. From behind a stock of reed-sheafs we watched 

 for ten minutes a pair of teal playing together — unobserved, as 

 the? supposed — in a rushy pond close by. Shovellers, with fan- 

 tastic coloring and great flat beaks out of all proportion to the size 

 of the bird, rose more than once within a few yards of us, and 

 after circling once or twice, pitched again not far off. Tired- 

 looking swallows sat disconsolately in parties of five or six on 

 bushes, or rose to skim over the water in a half-hearted way, and 

 light again. 



A pair of redshanks crossed us once or twice, flying in line, one 

 just behind the other, whistling loudly as they flew. Cuckoos 

 called, and overhead snipe poised themselves, drumming and 

 bleating and dropped like stones as they neared the ground. In 

 the nest of one of them we say a beautiful instance of " protective 

 coloring," the marvel of which never loses its freshness. The 

 keeper the day before our visit, had found the nest, and for our 

 benefit had marked the spot. It was in a line between two 

 bushes, within half a dozen yards of one which stood alone and 

 unmistakable on flat ground, with nothing on it bigger than a few 

 short sprits which could hide the nest. As we neared the spot, 

 the bird, to show there could be no mistake in the mark, rose 

 close by us. For more than a quarter of an hour we looked, — 

 three pairs of eyes, one pair the keeper's, — crossing and recrossing 

 everi toot of the ground, and were giving up the search as hopeless, 

 thinking that a crow perhaps had bunted the marsh in the early 

 morning before us, when in the middle of a tussock of sprits at 

 our feet we saw a maltese cross of very green eggs, mottled ir- 

 regularly with brownish-red, exactly imitating the bed of green 

 moss from which the sprits grew. The color of snipes' and many 

 other eggs is very volatile, and no one who has only seen them 

 " blown " in a cabinet can quite realize their beauty when seen in 

 the nest, fresh laid and untouched. 



At intervals of our tramp on shore we took the boat, rowing 

 across comers of the broad, or pushing our way through ditches 

 or narrow twisting channels. We saw coots' nests in plenty, and 

 one unfinished nest of the great crested grebe, — the one rare bird 

 which has made some return for the trouble taken of late years 

 for its preservation by becoming more common. A floating mass 

 of weeds, fished up, wringing wet, from the top of the water, looks 

 a hopeless nest for a bird to hatch her eggs in ; but, like a damp 

 hay-stack, it generates very considerable heat. "In a grebe's 

 nest" writes Mr. Southwell in the third volume of " Stevenson s 

 Birds of Norfolk," just published, "'in which were three eggs and 

 a newly hatched young one, the thermometer rose to 73", show- 

 ing that the nest, so far from being the cold and uncomfortable 

 stnicture by some supposed, was a real hotbed. On inserting the 

 thermometer into a beautifully neat and dry coot's nest, which the 

 bird had just left, I found the temperature to be 61". The day 

 was wet and cheerless, and the maximum reading of the ther- 

 mometer in the shade was 58°." 



"We saw through our glasses several crested grebes playing on 

 tlje broad. Oddly enough, the common little grebe — the " dab- 

 chick " — is less plentiful in Norfolk than it is in St. James's Park, 

 where last year as many as six pairs, all wild birds, nested and 

 brought off their broods. 



For six or seven pleasant hours we hunted marsh and broad 

 ■with eyes and ears open. But not once did we catch sight of a 

 feather, nor once hear the silvery "ping" of the note, of the 

 bearded tit. 



It was, of course, one comer only of a wide district, over the 

 ■whole of which the bird has been well known, that we had ex- 

 plored. There are other broads and marshes where local circum- 

 stances may have tempered the killing wind. There, while we 

 looked for them in vain, busy parents may have been working 

 bard from morning till night to cater for the wants of hungry 

 families safely hidden in daily thickening growths of bog flowers 

 and grasses, and another year the deserted reed-beds we visited 

 nay be repeopled. 



But as we drove home the conviction forced itself more and 

 more strongly upon us, that, from one at least of its most favored 

 haunts, the bearded tit has disappeared, and that it is not im- 

 probable that very soon — perhaps before this year is over — natu- 

 ralists may be telling the sad story of the extinction of one more 

 English bird. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



*«* Correspondents are requested to be as brief as possible. The writer's name 

 is in all cases required as proof of good faith. 



On request, twenty copies of the number containing his communication will 

 be furnished free to any correspondent. 



The editor will be glad to publish any queries consonant with the character 

 of the journal. 



Atmospheric and Seismic Influences. 



In your issue of May 1, I bad the honor of reporting a coinci- 

 dence in time between t'ivo peculiar phenomena, the fir^t the col- 

 lapse of the fire-area of Halemauniau in the crater of Kilauea on 

 March h. and the second an unprecedented f 11 of the mercury in 

 Honolulu to 48° F., on March 4. I remarked that this was per- 

 haps not a mere coincidence. I now have the satisfaction of 

 reporting a third phenomenon occurring at the same time, which 

 is undoubtedly connected with the second, and which may aid in 

 finding a conneolion with the first. 



By the return from the Caroline Islands of the missionary bark- 

 entine •' Morning Star," on the I9th of June, we get word of a 

 severe hurricane on Strong's Island, or Kusaie, on the 3d, 4th, and 

 5th of March {or '2d 3d, and 4th here). This island is in about 5° 

 north latitude, and 163° east longitude, or about 3 400 miles west 

 of Honolulu. Most of the breadfruit and cocoanut trees were up- 

 rooted, and a majority of the houses destroyed. The force of the 

 waves threw up an islet, half a mile long and five feet hi .h. on 

 the outer edge of the fringing reef. The severity of the blow was 

 from the north east. No barometer was observed there. No gale 

 was experienced at other islands, so far as heard from. There 

 was a sudden fall of the barometer at Honolulu on the 2d of 

 March (3d at Kusaie). 



The atmospheric change here is readily connected with the dis- 

 turbance at Kusaie. To show a connection of the latter with a 

 disturbance of the eai-th's crust on Haivaii is not quite so easy, 

 although I believe that coincidences between hurricanes and earth- 

 quakes are common. What happened on Hawaii was a subterra- 

 nean fracture in the lava duct of Kilauea. which let its contents 

 escape and apparently become distributed under the Kau desert to 

 the south-west, where lively earthquakes occurred. I suggest that 

 a common cause of the atmospheric and the seizmic disturbances 

 is to be sought for in astronomical conjunctions, possibly connected 

 with sun-spots. Account should probably be taken of the severe 

 blizzard of March 10, in England. Seeeno E. Bishop. 



Honolulu, June 30. 



The Collections of the Late Professor Parker, F.R.S. 



In a letter recently received by the undersigned from Professor 

 W. Newton Parker, F.Z S., of the University College of Cardiff, 

 Wales, a son of the late eminent Wm. Kitchen Parker, the ver- 

 tebrate morphologist, I am informed by its writer that " My 

 father's ex'-cutors have decided to sell the greater part of his col- 

 lection, which includes numerous skeletons (mainly of birds) and 

 a large number of slides of Foraminifera, etc. Do you think that 

 any of the public institutions in America would be likely to want 

 any of these? ... I hope you will forgive my troubling you 

 about this matter, and I only venture to do so knowing you to have 

 been a friend of my father's, who has an interest in him and bis 

 work." 



The late Professor Parker's labors in comparative morphology 

 for almost the la^t half century are so very widely known to sci- 

 ence the world over that it is quite unnecessary for me to dwell 

 upon them in the present connection. Their results, as published 

 in the proceedings and transactions of the various learned societies 

 of Europe since 1857, have long become in the highest dearee 

 classical, and they are as standard as they are imperishable. 



