Short Notes. 



197 



lighting fires at it, and amusing themselves for hours together. The young 

 birds were duly hatched and reared, and I believe that there is goirjg to be 

 another nest in the same hole this spring, as a pair of old birds have been 

 seen more than once lately near the place. 



I saw a Greater Spotted Woodpecker on the 1st of February, but have 

 not been able to find him again ; and in the course of the winter I have 

 seen a pair of Peregrines on two occasions, a single bird repeatedly ; a 

 Sheldrake (a very fine male) ; and a Coot, a bird which I have never seen 

 in the brooks near here before. 



There was what I may call a complete absence of Fieldfares and Redwings 

 from the fields in this immediate neighbourhood after November. The 

 Redwings arrived in the third week of October, but in small numbers, the 

 Fieldfares later, and they were more numerous — good flocks of them were 

 with us for about a fortnight, then they disappeared, but in the first week 

 of February came back, and are still (April 8th) about. A very few 

 Redwings also came back. 



A. B. Fisher. 



Oniosaivrus or Stegosaurus, from the Kimmeridge Clay of Swindon. 

 Some years ago a number of Saurian bones (now to be seen in the Natural 

 History Museum at South Kensington) were found at the Swindon Brick 

 and Tile Works. They were regarded at the time as belonging to a new 

 genus of Saurians, to which the name " Omosaurus " was assigned. It 

 appears, however, that amongst the astounding series of monsters whose 

 bones have been found and described by Professor Marsh in the Western 

 States of America (see "Extinct Monsters," by the Rev. H. N. Hutchinson) 

 one of the most astonishing, the "Stegosaurus," is really identical with 

 the creature to which the Swindon bones belonged. This monster, whose 

 length was about 30ft., either walked on all fours or sat up on end on his 

 hind legs and tail — the latter member being of enormous dimensions and 

 armed with four pairs of great spines. All down his back he had a cresting 

 of great erect bony plates, and, whilst he had but a small set of brains in 

 his head, he seems to have had a second set of larger dimensions in his 

 haunches, to control the movements of his gigantic hind quarters. 



Swallows roosting in osier beds. A letter appeared in The Times of Sept. 

 18th, 1896, describing a remarkable flight of swallows observed on the 

 evening of Sept. 15th at Chiswick, in the following words : — "It was a dark, 

 dripping evening, and the thick osier bed on Chiswick Eyot was covered 

 with wet leaf. Between 5 and 6 o'clock immense flights of swallows and 

 martins suddenly appeared above the eyot, arriving, not in hundreds, but 

 in thousands and tens of thousands. The air was thick with them, and 

 their numbers increased from minute to minute. Part drifted above, in 

 clouds, twisting round like soot in a smoke-wreath. Thousands kept 

 sweeping just over the tops of the willows, skimming so thickly that the 

 sky-line was almost blotted out for the height of from 3ft to 4ft. In 

 time I discovered whence they came. They were literally ' dropping from 



