Birds. 



8087 



Sphagnum moss, and thus succeeded in retarding their transformation till I had an 

 opportunity of witnessing at my leisure and with a powerful lens the exit of the 

 imago. The pupae, if put into a basin, and supplied with reeds, will creep up the 

 stems and undergo their change in a room quite as effectually as in the open air. — 

 — Peter Inchbald ; Storthes Hall, near H udder sfield, June 18, 1862. 



Caaing Whales in the Humber. — During the past week an extraordinary number 

 of caaing whales (Phoccena melas) have visited our river; between forty and fifty, having 

 run into shallow water on the Whitton Sands, were left dry on the tide falling. 

 These were soon observed by the people on shore, who, aided by some sloopmen, soon 

 put off with spades, handspikes and other weapons, and despatched the entire shoal. 

 I saw three of them which a sloopman had towed behind his vessel, and which at the 

 time of my visit were laid on the mud previously to flensing for the blubber. They were 

 apparently from fifteen to twenty feet long, and agreed very well with the description 

 and figure given in Bell's ' British Quadrupeds.' A similar shoal went on shore at 

 Cleethorps, near the mouth of the Humber, and the whole were also captured. Although 

 this visitation cannot be compared in point of magnitude with the wonderful shoals 

 which visit the Orkneys and Iceland, still the occurrence so far south struck me as 

 worthy of being recorded. I may mention that in recording the capture the local 

 newspapers mention them as grampusses, and again as bottle-uoses, but T feel sure 

 they must be referred to Phocaena melas. — G. Norman ; Hull, June 14, 1862. 



Poisoned Grain and Destruction of Small Birds. — Mr. W. H. Duignan, of 

 Rushall, near Walsall, writes : — " I have, or rather had, a rookery adjoining my house, 

 which I established three years ago, and in the welfare of which I took the greatest 

 interest; in fact I loved the rooks like my own children, and fed and protected them. 

 Yesterday evening my servants observed them falling as if shot, and in the course of 

 an hour the field was strewed with their dead bodies. On my return home I 

 examined them, and found their bills and craws filled with poisoned wheat. The 

 destruction is still going on, and nearly the whole of the old birds are dead, leaving 

 their young ones clamouring and starving in the trees. In the course of another day 

 I think there will not be a single bird, young or old, left alive. Mine is not an 

 isolated case : I know several other rookeries which have been devastated by the same 

 cause, and on one estate all the feathered game was destroyed." Another friend 

 writes as follows : — " The effect of the universal tendency to destroy small birds will 

 be yearly more disastrous, unless active measures are taken to check the evil. At 

 present these useful, nay indispensable creatures are at the mercy of every heartless 

 and ignorant vagabond, and even of the half-educated. Men shoot them, entrap 

 them and poison them ; boys are allowed by their parents to rob their nests, and thus 

 destroy what, in the great scheme of Nature, is of more value than themselves. In 

 my own neighbourhood, where insects of the most pernicious ;kinds were never more 

 abundant, a lady has this spring (1862) poisoned, with strychnine, at one dressing of 

 her grounds or gardens, no less than eight hundred birds of various kinds ; and she 

 was a few days since preparing for a second battue." The annexed is a verbatim copy 



