NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 107 
withdrawing the pipe, à part of the contents will follow, eani : repeat- 
the process several times you can empty the shell. n fill the 
after a time, which make the egg worthle It was while I was blow- 
ing a box of about one Moran eggs of wie Tern (Sterna Wilsoni) 
that Mr. Ellsworth suggested to me a new invention for blowing them. 
The result is, I can now prepare one hundred eggs in less time than I 
formerly could ten, and much better, doing all the work with my hands 
that heretofore has been a severe tax upon my lungs. I will not now 
describe the instrument, but will say, in brief, that it is invaluable to the 
odlogist. I would not part with mine for ten times the cost ($3.10) if I 
umen 
llsworth, of East Windsor Hill, Connecticut, will supply them. 
— Wm. Woop, East Windsor Hill, Conn. 
E VISION OF FISHES AND AMPHIBIOUS Reptites.—M. F. Plateau 
has advanced the theory **that these animals can see distinctly in the air, 
and that their distance of distinct vision must be nearly the same in this 
leged species, such as the Eel, the Chironectes, and the Climbing Perch, 
have hardly any need for combining the faculty of seeing distinctly in 
water with that of seeing distinctly in the air, this double faculty is evi- 
dently indispensable to the Amphibia.” — Annals and Magazine of Natural. 
History. 
LIGHT OF Brgps. — Will you inform us how sailing birds remain sus- 
pended in the air? Last summer while standing with Prof. Mudge, on 
the high bluff of the Kaw, opposite ae Kansas, a large bird, sup- 
posed to be Cathartes aura, rose fro opposite margin of the river, 
and accomplished a spiral flight at os over rg minutes duration, supposed 
to more than five hundred feet in height, and a mile in linear extent, 
against a wind blowing about «three" on the Smithsonian scale, without 
- his wings but once, and that was apparently to preserve his bal 
"s following suggestions have been made: 1. Birds in sailing do not 
rise above the initial Lees but use their wings as parachutes, like the 
l. e turkey about three 

