20 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



Wild Birds in Long Frosts. — In Northern Asia, 

 North-Eastern Europe and North America, where 

 there is a settled climatic condition in winter-time, 

 the birds have acquired the hereditariness of migra- 

 tion, during the prolonged frosts, which, roughly 

 speaking, extend from December until April, without 

 any lengthened intervals of mildness. On the 

 Tundras of Siberia or the prairies of Canada, in the 

 winter season, there are scarcely any indications of 

 bird life beyond snow buntings and one or two 

 other species. In Britain, however, we have now 

 no settled frozen period, and when such comes upon 

 us, of comparatively short length, we find not only 

 the human inhabitants of these islands unprepared, 

 but in greater degree the wild birds and some 

 other animals. The birds are by far the greatest 

 sufferers. During the present severe frost reports 

 have come from all parts of this country of large 

 numbers of blackbirds, thrushes, finches, gulls, and 

 other species having been found dead on the snow. 

 The cause of the death of these may probablv be 

 attributed as much to thirst as hunger and cold, 

 water in most country districts being unattainable. 

 This mortality must have extended to very many 

 thousands of birds throughout our islands. Although 

 nature is relentlessly cruel in her workings, yet out 

 of this sweeping destruction by cold and starvation 

 the balance is perhaps being maintained. The Acts 

 of Parliament which have been passed in the last 

 quarter of a century for the protection of our wild 

 birds aie no doubt admirable in themselves, but 

 considering how scarce have become the natural 

 enemies of the smaller birds it is probable that over 

 protection would create a feeble race, this being 

 invariably the result of artificial interference with 

 the natural law- of the " survival of the fittest " as 

 instanced by the grouse disease. Careful search 

 through early numbers of the " Gentleman's 

 Magazine" and other records of a century or more 

 ago, seems to show that when the natural enemies, 

 such as hawks, were plentiful there was not even in 

 the most severe frosts so great a mortality as has 

 occurred this year among the small birds. The 

 probable reason being that in those times the more 

 feeble were killed at intervals throughout the year, 

 and the strong survivors were better able to bear the 

 rigour of winter. This severe frost and consequent 

 wholesale destruction has done for the small birds 

 what the "Black Death'' of the middle of the 

 fourteenth century, and other epidemics, did for 

 the human race in England. Devastating and 

 dreadful though they must have been, yet their 

 effects on the social and physical life of the in- 

 habitants of England were undoubtedly good. 

 One cannot, however, help feeling sorry for the 

 individual birds which are thus suffering, and so do 

 all in one's power, in a small way, to frustrate the 

 purposes of nature bv providing our feathered 

 friends with food and water ; especially water, as 

 they probably suffer far more pain from thirst than 

 from hunger, when the ponds and streams are 

 frozen hard. — Flora Winstone, Epping ; February 

 i6!h, 1895. 



Fossil Pine.— It is remarkable how perfectly the 

 cellular structures are found to be preserved in the 

 vegetation of the remote past ; even so far back as 

 the coal-measure period many plants are met with 

 which still retain all the details of structure almost 

 as sharply defined as they are found in recent plant- 

 life. Fig. 1 is a transverse section and Fig. 2 a 

 longitudinal section, prepared from the trunk of one 

 of the fossil pines found at Cromer, in Norfolk. 



1. — Transverse section. 



The strata in which the trees are found is the 

 tertiary below the Chillesford clay and above the 

 upper chalk, and is associated with remains of 

 Elephas antiquus, Rhi)ioceros etruscans, Trogontherium 

 cuvieri, etc. For other information on the 

 characteristics of the geology of this portion of 

 East Anglia, I would refer, your readers to the 



Fig. 



-Longitudinal section. 



contributions of Mr. John Gunn, M.A.. to the 

 " Quarterly Journal of the Geographical Society," 

 vol. xxvi., and again in 1876. The sections were 

 cut from one of the specimens in our museum by 

 Mr. T. Henderson, of Dunstan-on-Tyne, and the 

 photo-micrograph is enlarged sixty diameters. — 

 IV. W. Midgley, F.R.Met.S., Museum, Bolton. 



