68 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 
on the back and ear. Its head was chafed by the shelf 
above, and no care seemed to be taken of it whatever. 
There were eight white ribs on the upper mandible, and 
eleven on the lower. Perhaps the principal birds of local 
interest are a White’s Thrush—the first killed in Europe, 
two young Sea Eagles, and a Pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus ), 
which was shot at Remilly in 1835. 
On the 13th I was deputed to accompany a lady who 
was leaving our party to return to Carlsruhe. We had 
hardly started and got clear of Metz station when we ran 
into a train of trucks, and broke the buffer of a waggon. 
We proceeded again, but we had not gone very far before we 
were once more brought to a standstill by an accident toa 
train just in front of us. This announcement filled some of 
the passengers with consternation, but after sitting still 
about an hour we were all ordered out. It was now quite 
dark. There had been a rapid thaw, and nobody relished 
a walk of two hundred yards in the slush and melting snow 
into the heart of a deep wood, where the cutting took us, to 
a place where sixty men, with flaring laths dipped in pitch, 
were working against time to repair the loosened line. It 
was a wild sight. Three of the carriages had fallen over 
the embankment, but whether many people had been 
wounded I could not hear. My only wonder is that the 
trains ran at all, considering how disorganised everything 
was. I have no doubt it was the passage of the heavy 
artillery which had displaced the metals. 
There is rather a nice Museum at Carlsruhe. I remarked 
a curious variety of our common Nuthatch, in which 
the throat and crown of the head were pure black, and 
another specimen pure white I never heard of but 
two other white Nuthatches; the first killed in August, 
1834, in Suffolk (Mag. of Nat. Hist. VIIL, p. 112); the 
second at Lyng in Norfolk, in 1846, presented to me by 
Mrs. Clarke. I also remarked a Great Titmouse with 
