170 



HARDWICK&S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



made experiments in the cultivation of wheat on the 

 same land in successive years, and the results were 

 communicated to the "Manchester Guardian." He 

 also advocated the growing of a short-strawed wheat 

 as peculiarly suitable to the conditions of farming in 

 Lancashire and Yorkshire. The gravelling of his 

 clay soils elicited some amusing comments from his 

 neighbours, one of whom remarked that he had seen 

 land tilled (manured) in various ways, but had never 

 before seen a field tilled with cobble-stones ! The 

 cultivation of cotton in India, and in Peru, was 

 another project in which he took a warm interest. 



Mr. Garnett was a keen observer of natural history. 

 Some excellent authorities had asserted that the 

 common wren never lined its nest with feathers, but 

 he showed conclusively that this was a mistake. The 

 nest in which eggs are laid, is profusely lined with 

 feathers, but during the period of incubation the male 

 frequently constructs several nests in the vicinity of 

 the first, none of which are lined. The existence of 

 these " cock-nests," as they are called by schoolboys, 

 was doubted, but Mr. Garnett fully made out his 

 case. The grey wagtail (Motacilla sulphured), some- 

 times looks at its own image in a window, and 

 attacks it witli great vivacity. A superstitious 

 neighbour was alarmed by this conduct in a " barley 

 bird (Motacilla Jlava), and thought it a portent of 

 evil. Her alarm was cured by the young naturalist, 

 who secured the bird of evil omen. Having caught 

 a colony of the long-tailed titmouse, Mr. Gamett and 

 his brother attempted to rear the half-fledged young 

 ones, but of the six old birds, five died in confine- 

 ment. The survivor was allowed to escape in the 

 hope that it would come back to rear the young ones. 

 This it did, and by the most unwearied exertions 

 supplied the whole brood, sometimes feeding them 

 ten times in a minute. Mr. Garnett took some pains 

 to establish the identity of the green with the wood- 

 sandpiper. The courage of the stoat, and the per- 

 tinacious manner in which the marsh-titmouse for a 

 time resisted attempts to drive her from her nest are 

 amongst his curious observations. The creeper, he 

 noticed, associated with the titmouse in winter. 

 The language of birds has not yet been mastered, 

 either by philologists or ornithologists, but it appears 

 that the alarm note of one is readily understood by 

 those of other species. Mr. Garnett desired to make 

 some young throstles leave a nest which was in 

 danger of visitation from mischievous lads. He took 

 one from the nest and made it cry out. Its brethren 

 quickly disappeared, the old bird set up a shriek of 

 alarm, and blackbird, chaffinch, robin, oxeye, blue 

 titmouse, wren and marsh-titmouse, and even the 

 golden-crested wren, which usually appears to care for 

 nothing ; in fact all the birds in the wood, except the 

 creeper, came to see what was the matter. Mr. 

 Garnett did not share the prejudice felt by some 

 farmers against the rook, which he held to be service- 

 able to man. He reckoned that one rookery in 



Wharfedale destroyed 209 tons of worms, insects and 

 their larva;. The rook also, he notes, relieved the 

 farmers from the apprehension caused by a flight of 

 locusts in Craven. Contrary to Waterton's opinion, 

 Mr. Garnett describes the process by which birds dress 

 their feathers with oil from a gland. The sedge- 

 warbler owes its local name of "mocking-bird " to its 

 imitative powers in copying the notes of the swallow, 

 the martin, the house-sparrow, spring-wagtail, whin- 

 chat, starling, chaffinch, white-throat, greenfinch, 

 iittle redpole, whin-linnet and other birds. Of the 

 water ouzel he says : "A pair had built for forty 

 years, according to tradition in a wheel-race near to 

 where I was born, and had never been molested by 

 anybody, until a gentleman in the neighbourhood, 

 who was a great ornithologist, employed his game- 

 keeper to shoot this pair. I think the natives of 

 Calcutta were not more indignant when an unlucky 

 Englishman got one of their sacred bulls into his 

 compound, and baited him, than was our little 

 community at what we considered so great an out- 

 rage. The gamekeeper narrowly escaped being 

 stoned by myself and some more lads, any one of 

 whom would have shot fifty blackbirds or fieldfares 

 without any misgiving." Mr. Garnett once shot 

 what he afterwards believed to have been a Sabine's 

 snipe. 



His interest in the river was not confined to the 

 salmon, and he made some interesting observations 

 on the propagation of lampreys, the spawning of 

 minnows, and the breeding of eels. A short note on 

 the last-named topic, by Mr. Jeremiah Garnett is also 

 printed. On the formation of ice at the bottom of 

 rivers, there are two papers, one by Mr. Thomas 

 Garnett, and the other by his brother, the Rev. 

 Richard Garnett. A shower of gossamer, the thread 

 produced by the aeronautic spider, is recorded as seen 

 on the hills near Blackburn. One of Mr. Garnett's 

 friends was the unfortunate Mr. Joseph Ritchie, of 

 Otley, who accompanied Captain Lyon's expedition to 

 Fezzan, and died there in 1S19. To this there is an 

 allusion in the following passage : " In conclusion, allow 

 me to say, that the leisure hours which a somewhat 

 busy life has enabled me to spend in these pursuits, 

 have been some of the happiest of my existence, and 

 have awakened and cherished such an admiration of 

 nature, and such a love of the coi'ntry and its scenes, 

 as I think can never be appreciated by the inhabitants 

 of large towns, and which I cannot describe so well 

 as in the words of one of my friends, in a beautiful 

 apostrophe to England, when leaving it, never to 



return. 



" To thee 

 Whose fields first fed my childish fantasy; 

 Whose mountains were my boyhood's wild delight, 



Whose rocks, and woods, and torrents were to me 

 The food of my soul's youthful appetite ; 



Were music to my ear — a blessing to my sight." 



Why do not more of the dwellers in rural districts 

 employ their often abundant leisure in natural 

 history studies ? 



