NOTES AND QUERIES. 427 



The Lesser Shrew and Water Shrew in Yorkshire.— In August 

 last I had brought to me a female Lesser Shrew, Sorex minutus, and 

 when preserving it found it to contain five foetal Shrews in an advanced 

 stage of development. In September I picked up dead on a footpath a 

 beautiful melanic variety of the Water Shrew, Crossopm fodiens, with the 

 under parts almost as dark as the upper, but unfortunately it was much too 

 far gone for preservation. — Oxley Grabham Tlaxton, York). 



Bank Vole in Kent. — While snail-hunting round Canterbury last 

 August I came upon a nest of young Bank Voles, among some refuse in a 

 hedge-bank. I had one in my hands for some minutes, and am sure of its 

 identity. I do not remember its being recorded in Kent hitherto, but 

 I believe it to be very common from the number of runs seen in the neigh- 

 bourhood. — Lionel E. Adams (77, St. Giles Street, Northampton). 



BIRDS. 



The Rate of Flight in Birds. — In the October number of this 

 Journal (p. 378) the Editor adds an interesting and valuable note to 

 Mr. Butterfield's communication on this subject. On the authority of 

 Herr Gatke (English edition, p. 470), he remarks that in the case of the 

 American Golden Plover, Charadrius virginicus, flocks have been met 

 with at a distance of 400 geographical miles east of Bermuda, flying in a 

 southerly direction on their way from their breeding-places in Labrador to 

 Northern Brazil. The distance between these points is 3200 miles, and 

 since there is no point between on which they could alight for rest, they 

 are obliged to perform the entire journey in one uninterrupted flight. The 

 velocity in fifteen hours would amount to 212 miles per hour. It is not, 

 however, strictly accurate to state that the American Golden Plover has no 

 point in this long journey at which it can alight for rest. A glance at an 

 atlas will show that the same meridian of longitude passes through East 

 Labrador and the island of Bardados, the most easterly of the Lesser 

 Antilles, and exactly in the line of flight of the migratory hosts passing 

 from Labrador and regions further to the north to South America. If a 

 reference be made to a paper on the birds of Barbados, published in ' The 

 Ibis ' for 1889, it will be found that I have therein made some observations 

 on the large number of American Golden Plover that annually alight on 

 that island during the months of August, September and October, whilst 

 stragglers appear as late as November. The first arrivals are invariably 

 dark-breasted birds, showing that the old birds precede the young, and the 

 first arrivals are nearly all males. Great as are the numbers of this 

 species that do alight in Barbados, attracted by decoy birds purposely set 

 out as lures, and by the call-note of the Plover, admirably imitated by the 

 island gunners, yet the flocks that descend are a mere fraction of those 

 that pass over. Waiting at the decoy-huts for flocks to come down to the 



