The Effect of Modern High Explosives on Birds. 181


THE EFFECT OF MODERN HIGH


EXPLOSIVES ON BIRDS.


By W. H. St. Quintin.


The effect of modern high explosives has been brought home

to all of us during the events of the past few months. It may be

worth recording that the concussion, which has such a paralysing

effect upon man, when the explosion takes place in his immediate

neighbourhood, can, in the case of small living creatures, actually

destroy life without any external injury being visible.


Mr. W. J. Clarke, the well-known naturalist of Scarborough,

tells me that on Wednesday, the 16th of December, when the

cowardly attack upon the defenceless town was at its height, a large

shell fell in the garden of the next house to his own. Just inside

his sitting-room window, and about a foot from the glass, was a

cage in which Mr. Clarke kept a collection of small seed-eaters,

all in good health, and many of which he had had for several years.

Curiously enough not a pane of glass was cracked, perhaps because

each window was open an inch or two at the top, although every

sash cord in five windows was broken and a collection of cacti was

thrown down off the window sill (inside). But the result was

disastrous to the poor little cage birds. Shells were falling so

thickly in that part of Scarborough that people left their homes

and rushed out into the country. Mr. Clarke does not think that

any birds were dead when he left the house with his wife, but when

the German vessels had gone, and he returned some two hours later,

two of the birds—a Common Waxbill and a Cordon Bleu—were

dead, and the others were sitting moping about the cage, flying

wildly about if disturbed. Next morning a Cutthroat was dead,

and between that day and the following Monday he lost four more ;

altogether six birds succumbed out of eleven.


Mr. and Mrs. Clarke were rendered quite deaf by the con¬

cussion and remained so for several days. Under the circumstances

it is not surprising that no special examination was made of the

dead birds, otherwise it would have been interesting if the exact

nature of the injury could have been ascertained.



