THE COLLECTORS' MONTHLY. 



31 



alis). The inside of nest is lined with 

 what seems to be chicken feathers and 

 cotton. 



The height of the nest is 80 milli- 

 meters ; the circumference 190 mill. ; 

 depth inside 55 mill. ; opening across 

 top 20 mill. 



The complement of eggs — four ; 

 greenish or bluish white and speckled 

 with light chestnut brown. 



I came across but two pair of the 

 birds in the same vicinity. Four 

 miles west of this place I saw another 

 pair ; the birds are not common at all, 

 rather rare. In Hopkins Co., as yet, 

 I have never seen any, and have only 

 been able to secure the one set. 



On June 1, I picked up a dead bird 

 that had been beaten down out of a 

 large Post Oak the previous^night by 

 a severe storm that uprooted many 

 mighty pines growing in this vicinity. 

 W. S. Crugan, Sulphur Springs, Tex. 



Out in a Lafayette Park police 

 station, St. Louis, they have a weather 

 prophet which eclipses all the baro- 

 meters in the neighborhood. It is a 

 frog of the genus IFyla, more familiar 

 to the general readers as the tree toad. 

 Hunt, the superintendent of the Park, 

 was mildly abusing his barometer one 

 day for misleading him, when the offi- 

 cer on the beat, an old frontiersman, 

 said he would show him a trick. He 

 took a glsss jar and threw into it some 

 stones and a couple of inches of water. 

 Then he whittled out a wooden ladder 

 and put it in the jar. After some 

 lively scrambling a tree-toad was 



caught, chucked in and a tin top was 

 screwed on. The weather indicator 

 was complete. When it is going to 

 be fair weather that toad roosts on the 

 top round of the ladder, solemnly 

 blinking the hours away. From 

 twelve to fifteen hours before a change 

 to bad weather, " the general," as they 

 call him, begins to climb down, and 

 hours before a storm sets in he squats 

 himself on a stone, and, with his head 

 just above the surface of the water 

 peers aloft at the coming storm. 



Let the weather be changeable and 

 " shifting " as " Old Prob." says, and 

 the toad goes up and down that ladder 

 like a scared middy. When it is fair 

 and the toad roosts aloft his skin is of 

 a light grayish green. When the 

 change comes the skin turns black as 

 the toad goes down the ladder, becom- 

 ing a jet, shining black by the time he 

 reaches the bottom. 



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Owls and Their Uses. 

 The utility of the common owl as a 

 destroyer of vermin is scarcely likely 

 to be called in question at the present 

 day. A remarkable instance in point 

 is recorded by Herr Grotte, in the 

 Journal of the Hanover agricultural 

 society. This gentleman discovered in 

 his garden an owl's nest built in a 

 hollow tree. When first observed it 

 contained four eggs and the bodies of 

 seven field mice. On the following 

 day six of the mice had been devoured 



