52G 



Miscellaneous. 



morning with a face full of importance, to inquire if we were aware 

 of the depredations that the Tomtits were committing on the Bee- 

 hives. He had, he said, been watching them for some time, and 

 the way in which the Tits proceed is to strike hard with their bills 

 on the boards on which the hives are placed ; this noise awakens 

 the bees, who come forth to learn from whence it proceeds, and their 

 artful and merciless assailants immediately pounce upon and kill all 

 who are not fortunate enough to escape, and either eat them on the 

 spot or fly off with them to a neighbouring tree or shrub, and there 

 devour them ; and in this way great numbers are destroyed. The 

 child further told us that he had witnessed the same attacks on his 

 father's bees at their cottage among the woods, and that his parents 

 are in the habit of setting traps for the cannibals, and he requested 

 to be furnished with mouse-traps ; these were given to him, and he 

 placed them on the board at the mouth of each hive, and has already 

 succeeded in killing five or six of the felons, who have thus paid with 

 their lives for their murderous thievery." — From a Correspondent in 

 West Kent *. 



Larus glaucus : — Larus capistratus. — Mr. S. Mummery, of Bath- 

 road, Margate, informs us of his having shot at Kingsgate, on the 6th 

 of January (the weather being snowy with a strong easterly wind), a 

 Glaucous Gull, one of the finest specimens he had ever seen, a male 

 in full plumage, and now in the Margate Museum. — Also that two 

 fine specimens of the Brown-headed Gull had been captured ; one of 

 them having been shot at Westgate-bay, between Margate and Bir- 

 chington. This was alone and very tame, allowing Mr. Mummery's 

 friend, who shot it, to approach very near before it attempted to fly. 

 The other was shot by himself near Kingsgate. Both are males : 

 one of these is now in the museum, and the other is for sale. In 

 reference to Mr. Jenyns's remark that the food and nidification of 

 this Gull are unknown, Mr. Mummery states that they feed on 

 small fish that are near the water's edge, such as dace, &c, also on 

 shrimps and worms. Their nests they build in the high cliffs of 

 Dover, where specimens in full plumage can be obtained in the 

 spring ; as also their eggs, by lowering a man over the cliffs. The 

 birds are to be seen flying about half-way up in great abundance. 



Mr. Mummery offers, in the exercise of his occupation as a col- 

 lector, to furnish those who may apply to him with nearly the whole 

 of the aquatic birds in their different stages of plumage, with their 

 eggs, in exchange for inland birds. 



A strange News-Carrier. — A friend lately arrived from sea has 

 furnished us with the following information, copied from a shipping 



* [Our esteemed correspondent will find that Mr. Yarrell (Birds, vol. i. 

 341) states of the Marsh Titmouse, that " it is said to be an enemy to bees ;" 

 and mentions, under Parus cceruleus, an item in a churchwarden's account 

 for seventeen dozen of Tomtits' heads. They are said to crush the bees with 

 great adroitness transversely in their beak repeatedly, so as to escape being 

 stung. — Ed.] 



