394 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



when it looked much like a large Spotted Flycatcher, and again while 

 it was seated in a hedge. It then, as the sun was on it, appeared a 

 very light bird. It possibly arrived with a Jack-Snipe, which I put 

 up from some long grass hard by. The wind was about north, and 

 it was a lovely day after rain in the night. — E. C. Aenold (East- 

 bourne College). 



Daphne-berries eaten by Birds. — Is the Daphne, the fruit of 

 which Mr. E. P. Butterfield says (ante, p. 338) has a great attraction 

 for Greenfinches, the D. mezereum, which bears purple fragrant flowers 

 in early spring and showy, glossy red berries at the end of summer '? 

 If so, I can name another bird which eats them, but swallows the 

 whole berry. For several years we have known that some bird took 

 them, and have been annoyed at the loss of a pretty ornament to the 

 garden, and also at getting no seedling plants, which come up round 

 the trees if the berries are allowed to fall naturally. This year, with 

 the help of my gardener (who is an observant man) and his boy, I 

 have found out one bird at least which eats the berries. The gardener 

 and his boy said it was a Whitethroat, and they watched it eating 

 the berries. I did not actually see the bird eat them, but I identified 

 the Warbler frequenting the spot where the berries were being taken 

 (on July 29th) as a Lesser Whitethroat. The Common Whitethroab 

 rarely comes into village gardens — being a bird of the wayside and 

 the bushed waste — but the Lesser Whitethroat is a regular garden 

 bird. The Greenfinches here, in late autumn and winter (when we 

 have numbers of them), subsist largely on the fruit of the sweet- 

 briar, of which plant there is a good deal in the garden. They are 

 also fond of the berries of the Cotoneaster Simonsii, and I have seen 

 as many as eight of them at once in a bush close to the dining-room 

 window steadily feeding on the fruit. Greenfinches and Hawfinches 

 feed in much the same way, mouthing the berries, or whatever their 

 food may be, and at such times are very quiet, and rather slow and 

 stolid in their ways, though the latter are very easily alarmed. — 

 O. V. Aplin (Bloxham, Oxon). 



REPTILIA. 



A Rare Variety of the Common Viper. — While staying with my 

 friend Mr. G. A. Macmillan in Danby Dale, not far from Whitby, I 

 picked up on a moorland track the mutilated body of a small snake, 

 apparently about a foot long. The small size of the vertebral column 

 proved it a young one, and the remains of the skin made it certain 

 that it was a Viper. This skin was of a dark bluish grey, with 



