NOTES AND. QUERIES. 357 



voices, turning round their rattles, knocking stones against stones, inciting 

 their dogs to bark themselves hoarse — in short, behaving like madmen." 

 The young Swans of the flock are so maddled by the noise — " following as 

 it does close upon the deep, unbroken silence of their inland lakes" — that 

 numbers of them fall to the earth as if they were shot, and are despatched. 

 In an editorial note appended to the communication mention is made of the 

 singular fact that this mode of catching Swans appears to have been unknown 

 to other writers on Iceland — as Olafson, Olavius, Faber, Van Troil, Newton, 

 Shepherd, &c. In the issue of Nov. 23rd Mr. Harting mentions other 

 cases of birds being captured when terrified by noises and shouting, but 

 Stefanoson's account has neither been denied nor received confirmation. 

 Mr. Daniel Francis tells me he has never witnessed a Swan-hunt in Iceland 

 answering to the above description, but his brother has some recollection of 

 hearing of such hunts near Eidisvik. An interesting case mentioned by 

 Mr. Harting (loc. cit.) refers to the capture by guachos of the Black-necked 

 Swan. It is from Mr. W. H. Hudson's ' Naturalist in La Plata,' and is as 

 follows : — " When the birds are feeding or resting on the grass, two or three 

 men or boys on horseback go quickly to leeward of the flock, and when 

 opposite to it suddenly wheel and charge it at full speed, uttering loud shouts, 

 by which the birds are thrown into such terror that they are incapable of flying, 

 and are quickly despatched." Mr. Harting's concluding remarks are of much 

 interest, and may be here reproduced : — " It would appear that the terrifying 

 effects of the human voice upon birds in flight has been discovered and 

 exercised for their destruction in many distant quarters of the globe. 

 Indeed it seems likely that, in some form or other, this mode of capturing 

 birds is of considerable antiquity, and it would not be difficult perhaps to 

 find allusions to the practice of bird-catching by shouting and throwing sticks 

 amougst the ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Japanese." Can any 

 reader of 'The Zoologist' make allusion to this practice amongst either 

 of the two nations last mentioned ? — W. Ruskin Butterfield (St. Leonards- 

 on-Sea). 



Habits of the Cuckoo in Confinement.— Mr. George Davis, of 

 Gloucester, whose name has once before appeared in ' The Zoologist ' as 

 the successful breeder of a cross between Carduelis spinus and Linola 

 cannabina, possesses a Cuckoo eighteen months old, whose appetite in 

 captivity apparently has developed a singular trait. The owner of the bird 

 is devoted to our wild avifauna, and to Cuckoos especially, having brought 

 up no fewer than forty for his own delectation. Formerly, when at work 

 in the city, with his home in the country, he used to carry backwards and 

 forwards his Cuckoos, so that he might lose no chance of studying them, 

 keeping the birds by his bedside, and rivalling a foster-mother by his 

 diligence in feeding them with meal-worms, whilst this had to last never 

 less than for six weeks or two months before they would peck up for them- 



