1881.] : Zoilogy. 319 
The point upon which most stress may be laid is this: That by 
providing them with nesting-places in our gardens, orchards or 
grounds, and not allowing them to be caught by cats or scared 
away by mischievous boys, we may have scores if not hundreds 
of them about us during most of the time in which insects are 
destructive. They undoubtedly return to the same localities to 
rear their young year after year. Last season I had up about 
thirty of these nesting-boxes, and all but two or three, which were 
not favorably located, were occupied. My crop of wrens could 
scarcely have been less than one hundred and fifty, and the old 
birds ‘filled the air with music when they were not on duty in 
building their nests or feeding their young! The coming spring 
I intend to put up at least a hundred of these nesting-boxes ia 
my orchards and groves, and I have no doubt I shall be repaid 
a hundred thousand fold for the little labor it costs. As long as 
“they come back so regularly every year and in constantly increas- 
ing numbers, and serve me so well, I shall do all in my power to 
protect and encourage them. And I am of the opinion that when 
One species of social, useful birds can be made to congregate in 
such unusual numbers, others will come also. But the hardiness, 
sociability, love of the locality where it was reared, and wonder- 
ful fecundity of the little house wren, render it, in my judgment, 
one of the most valuable of all our insectivorous birds.—Charles 
Aldrich, Webster City, Iowa, 1881. 
Our Soctar Biue-Jays.—None of our winter birds are so social 
as the blue-jays. We see them every day during our long, cold 
winters. Our barnyards are their favorite resorts, where they 
walk about very familiarly among the poultry and domestic ani- 
ni atte my jay had made the best possible provision to protect 
better than any others that remain with us all the year round. 
Soon after sunrise on any of these cold, clear mornings, they can 
be heard merrily chirping in the neighboring groves and thickets. 
—Charles Aldrich, Webster City, Iowa, Fan. 7, 1881. : 
ZooLocicat Norrs.—M. Jules MacLeod has contributed a brief 
Paper to the Royal Academy of Belgium on the ré/e of insects in 
the pollinization of heterostyle flowers (Primula elatior). Mr. 
S. H, Scudder continues in the Library Bulletin of Harvard Uni- 
versity, No. 17, his bibliography of fossil insects, beginning with 
A. G. Butler and ending with d'Eichwald. A structural feature 
pty 0 unknown among Echinodermata, found in deep-sea 
Jphiurans, is pointed out by Mr. T. Lyman in an essay under this 
utle in the Anniversary Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural | 
