Birds, Sfc. 7201 



logues on their own plan ; indeed for general collections of eggs they 

 are obliged so to do ; but to those who are content with a moderate 

 series of the eggs of British birds only, the useful ' Systematic Cata- 

 logue'* of the Rev. S. C. Malan will be found of very great con- 

 venience, though the plan recommended by that gentleman, of using 

 tickets to distinguish the specimens instead of visiting in ink on their 

 shells, appears to the author, as has been stated above, to be liable to 

 many grave objections. But with the simple substitution of inscrip- 

 tions for tickets (which are so easily removable) Mr. Malan's method 

 seems deserving of very great commendation, for it is the comparative 

 indelibility of the former which gives them so great an advantage 

 over the latter as permanent records of identification and authentica- 

 tion. 



-'" Alfred Newton. 



•■> Elveden,Thetford, 

 July 11, 1860. 



Instinct of the Common Partridge. — This season a pair of the common partridge 

 selected the following extraordinary position for a place of incubation, — i. e. the top 

 of an old barrel in a yard, at a considerable distance from a field, at Trumpington, 

 Cambridgeshire, where six or seven chicks were duly hatched. Surely this may justly 

 be termed instinct, for no other cause can be assigned than an instinctive foreboding 

 in the parental birds of an approaching season that was likely to prove disastrous to 

 its eggs and young, and has not the past almost unprecedented wet weather proved 

 so, to our cost? Never having met with a similar instinctive propensity in the 

 partridge, I have ventured to send this note for insertion in the 'Zoologist.' — 

 S. P. Saville ; Jesus Terrace, Cambridge. 



Toads waiting for Moths attracted hy Sugar. — There is a tree standing by the 

 side of a ditch in the fens, which leans in, three feet and a half from the ground, two 

 inches out of the perpendicular; there is a small hollow place in the stem, one inch 

 deep and two inches wide, all the way from the ground growing wider upwards till it 

 is lost. On this tree, three feet and a half from the ground, I sugar for insects, and 

 several nights a large toad has ascended the tree to the sugar : it always sits quietly 

 on the stem, and I never find it on any other tree, although there are several other 

 trees, all ash. I believe its object is to take the insects that come to the sugar. 

 I have called the men at the railway bridge, which crosses the river near the spot, to 



* • A Systematic Catalogue of the Eggs of British Birds,' arranged with a view 

 to supersede the use of labels for eggs, by the Rev. S. C. Malan, M.A. London : 

 John Van Voorst, 1, Paternoster Row. 1848. 8vo, pp. 170. Price 8*. 6d. 

 XVIII. 3 G 



