248 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
but seemed as if it would by a higher power resolve itself into 
globules, with some peculiar markings. I tried all the combina- 
tions of lenses I had, but could only say: “ Oh, that I had a friend 
to give me a five hundred dollar microscope! Oh, for a lens that 
would show what this almost resolvable gold is made of!” To the 
eye, the peculiar and odoriferous secretion of this animal is of a 
pale bright or glistening yellow, with specks floating in it. By 
the microscope it looks like a clear fluid, as water with masses of 
gold in it, and the specks like bubbles of air, covered with gold, 
or rather bags of air in golden sacks. The air I take to be the 
gas nascent from the golden fluid. Had I known that my inter- 
est in the dissection would have rendered me so forgetful of the’ 
pungent surroundings, I would have had chemical reagents to test 
the substance so easily obtainable. 
Another thing was a matter of interest. If I correctly made out 
the capsule of fluid, the commonly called “glands” are the mus- 
cular tunic enveloping and capable of compressing the reservoir, 
and their sole use is to eject the liquid. The teat-like projections 
have one large orifice for a distant jet of the substance, and also a 
strainer, with numerous holes—like the holes in the cones in the 
human kidney — for a near but diffusive jetting of the matter. 
The substance is secreted by small glands, dark in color, and of 
small calibre, connected with the capsule by narrow ducts.—J. S. 
Parker, M.D., in Country Gentleman. 
Tue Nest or tHe Pigeon Hawx.—In the March number of 
the American Narturatist, Vol. V. page 56, Dr. Brewer ques- 
tions a statement of Mr. Winfred Stearns concerning the. position 
of the pigeon hawk, and says that “in hollow trees” ‘is a condi- 
tion in which the nest of a pigeon hawk is never found.” On 
page 537 of Vol. IV. of the American Narvratist, I mention that 
‘in May, 1863, a nest of this species (Hypotriorchis columbarius) 
with young birds just able to fly, was found in a large sycamore, 
on Duch Island, Delaware River, near Trenton, N. J.” Now 
then stated in the tree, not on it; and such was the exact truth of 
the matter, and I can hardly see how so widely different birds as 
this and the Tinnunculus sparverius could be confounded. Possi- 
bly Mr. Stearns may have done so; but I did not. The syca- 
more in question is a very large tree, with a hollow in it some 
eight feet from the ground, in capacity about equal to a flour- 
barrel, and with an opening not over six inches in diameter, situ- 
