198 



Short Notes. 



the sky.' The flocks were travelling at a height at which they were quite 

 invisible in the cloudy air, and from minute to minute they kept dropping 

 down into sight, and so perpendicularly to the very surface of the river or 

 of the eyot. One of these flocks dropped from the invisible regions to the 

 lawn on the river bank on which I stood. Without exaggeration I may say 

 that I saw them fall from the sky, for I was looking upwards, and saw 

 them when first visible as descending specks. The plunge was perpendicular, 

 till within ten yards of the ground. Soon the high-flying crowds of birds 

 drew down, and swept for a few minutes low over the willows, from end to 

 end of the eyot, with a sound like the rush of water in a hydraulic pipe. 

 Then by a common impulse the whole mass settled down from end to end 

 of the island, upon the osiers. Those in the centre of the eyot were black 

 with swallows — like the black blight on beans. Next morning, at 6.30, a.m., 

 every swallow was gone. In half an hour's watching not a bird was seen. 

 Whether they went on during the night, or started at dawn, I know not." 



This letter was followed, in the issue of Sept. 22nd, by another, from Mr. 

 E. F. Catford, dated Swindon, Sept. 19th, describing a precisely similar 

 scene at Coate, near Swindon :— " A few days ago, at Coate, near Swindon, 

 within a stone's-throw of the house where Eichard Jefferies was born, the 

 swallows gathered one evening in thousands — the sky seemed black with 

 them — and settled in an osier bed, quite near the public highway. They 

 descended in precisely the same manner as at Chiswick — as it were, 'they 

 fell from the sky,' or, as an eye-witness put it, came ' like bullets from a 

 gun.' A like scene, too, has been witnessed this week at Lechlade, in 

 Gloucestershire, the birds here again choosing an osier bed. The gathering 

 at Coate is specially remarkable because of its annual recurrence ; it has 

 happened every year for thirty years at the same osier bed. Can such 

 unfailing regularity be explained? And can Mr. Cornish or any other 

 naturalist tell us why the birds seem always to prefer osiers ? " 



on Milt5|iw |$tatto£. 



The Cathedral Church of Salisbury ; a Description of its Fabric, 

 and a brief History of the See of Sarum. With 32 illustrations. 

 Edited by Gleeson White. London : George Bell & Sons. 1896. Cloth. 

 Cr. 8vo. Pp. 115, Price 1/6. Bell's Cathedral Series. 



This little book, with its tastefully-designed cover, its many illustrations, 

 and its concise scholarly letterpress, undoubtedly supplies a want. Hitherto 



