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The Museum Gazette 



been out of the nest three weeks and are healthy and lively ; 

 they are perfectly white, with pink eyes and yellow beaks." 



Birds in Mid-winter. 

 " Sand is as necessary as food in snowy weather, for a bird 

 with an empty gizzard cannot digest its food. Birds endure 

 great hardships when the ground is covered with snow for 

 many days together, but I fancy that they care little for mere 

 cold. Such as are fond of bathing will bathe in an ice-cold 

 spring on a frosty morning, and you will rarely find a bird 

 of any kind seeking shelter from a cutting north-east wind. 

 Rain is a different thing, many birds do not like to get their 

 plumage wet. There is sometimes talk of birds perishing 

 from cold, but it will generally be found by close enquiry into 

 the circumstances, that they were short of food and water 

 when they succumbed " (Miall in " Round the Year"). 



Ancient British Monuments. 

 In Nature, December 13, appeared the first of a series of 

 illustrated " Notes on Ancient British Monuments," from the 

 pen of Sir Norman Lockyer. It deals with the Aberdeen 

 circles, and takes the form of a letter to Dr. Angus Fraser. 

 We await number two with pleasurable expectation. 



The Bleaching of Bark. 

 The following observation was made in a plantation of 

 sweet chestnut which had been cut down three years ago. 

 The stoles had the luxuriant new growth of three summers, 

 for it was now again winter. Attention was attracted to one 

 stole which differed from all the rest. The peculiarity was 

 that its shoots, most of them four feet high or longer, 

 were green and healthy looking in their upper parts, but of a 

 light yellow-white colour for eighteen inches length from the 

 stole, that is, at their oldest and thickest parts. The first 

 suggestion was that they had been cleanly barked by rabbits, 

 but against this came the consideration that rabbits will not 

 attack chestnuts; and if they did why should they bark every 



