4942 Birds. 



wrapped haughtily in clouds, all make a prospect of surpassing beauty, all combine to 

 fill brimful the eye and heart and mind. Carry, too, the eye to that isolated pyramid 

 below us, on which the sea-birds swarm tier above tier, smiling defiance to the fowler 

 from their fortress, as yet inviolate. Is not your head dizzy ? you seldom looked down 

 so far beneath your feet as its summit, and yet that is but half the depth a pebble must 

 traverse to reach the water. Is that a seal? your guide hesitates, for it is no easy 

 matter to distinguish him from the rock on which he sits ; but they are common enough 

 most days. Turn, then, your attention westward, ye naturalists and sportsmen that 

 like something larger than gnats or diatoms for your quarry. Here is a noble field ; 

 not Scotland only is worthy an excursion. There are fewer species of birds perhaps, 

 and less variety breeding in the inland lakes of Ireland, but for one grand feature — 

 the precipice breasting the Atlantic — this place is well worthy of your notice, and the 

 Irish Highlands offer, too, a little-explored country. — Hesperus. 



Notices of Rarer Birds about Barnsley. — In the natural history of this country, as 

 various species, at no distant period only rare by comparison with others, are now 

 becoming positively so, any notice of rare occurrences possesses an additional, though 

 painful interest, from the consideration that opportunities to study the living subject, 

 in its natural state, are growing less and less, in proportion as the over-anxious desire 

 to possess collections of preserved specimens is encouraged. Of the rarer birds noticed 

 during the present autumn a bare enumeration is here given : — The hooded crow was 

 obtained on the 9th of November; the kestrel, sparrow hawk, longeared owl, brown owl 

 and white owl are the principal birds of prey noted in October ; a pair of nightjars from 

 the neighbouring moors in September ; and in the last week of August several ringed 

 plovers or dotterells (Charadrius hiaticula), the green sandpiper (Totanus ochropus) and 

 the black tern (Sterna fissipes), which proved a young bird of the year; the upper parts 

 gray margined with brown, and the white collar beautifully distinct, were observed, and 

 some shot, on the newly-formed island in Worsborough Reservoir, a place well adapted 

 for water-fowl, which would add a new and living grace to its rich landscapes, if per- 

 mitted to come and go unmolested. The last three species are the rarest of those 

 named, but not so rare to this part and to the entire kingdom as the little auk, which 

 occurred near this town last November, about which time the scaup duck and the 

 tufted duck were obtained in this neighbourhood. — Thomas Lister; Post Office, 

 Barnsley, Yorkshire, November 9, 1855. 



On the Habits of Palaornis Malaccensis. — These handsome birds are not uncommon 

 in Labuan ; and are to be seen in the early morning flying about above the tops of the 

 trees in small flocks of six or eight, uttering in their flight a loud, quick scream, very 

 much like the note of the common swift: they are particularly fond of the fruit of the 

 Dryabalanops camphora, which they split open, and eat the curious crumpled coty- 

 ledons, in spite of their pungent taste and smell of turpentine. The specimen from 

 which the above description is taken was shot when feediug upon the seeds of the 

 Dillenia speciosa, a shrub about ten or fifteen feet high, and it is the only instance in 

 which we have known them venture so near the ground: when first seen he was busy 

 opening the capsules of the plant, and scraping out the seeds with his beak, never 

 omitting to clip off at a single bite every one he emptied ; having done this he dropped 

 himself under the twig he sat on, swinging by one leg to watch it fall : when it reached 

 the ground he testified his satisfaction by a low chirp, and, giving himself a vigorous 

 swing, caught the perch with his other foot, and walked gravely along to another cap- 

 sule, not hopping, but placing one foot before the other in a most odd-fashioned way. 



