Correspondence 



515 



" One more curious feature in ecdysis. If a crab has, some 

 time prior to the process, lost a leg or two, an eye or claw, 

 the emerging form has these in perfection. (This quite in- 

 dependent of the frequent process of the replacement of lost 

 limbs from a bud which appears on the scar.) If a limb gets 

 broken off just before the moult I do not know what happens. 

 This I have not seen, and in this book I am nowhere quoting, 

 only telling of what I have observed." 



The last sentence explains the lucidity of the author's de- 

 scriptions. He is a true field naturalist, hence is not dogmatic. 

 In more than one page we find him remarking, " I believe, 

 but am not sure." 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE "MUSEUM GAZETTE." 



Dear Sir, — In your Editorial Notes in this month's Magazine, 

 you ask for instances of birds storing winter food. 



I was formerly puzzled by finding seedlings of the oak springing up 

 on waste grass land at a considerable distance from oak trees. 

 Acorns are not adapted for transport by the wind, how, therefore, had 

 they been conveyed and planted ? 



Then an ornithological friend informed me that he had once 

 watched rooks through field glasses plucking acorns, which they 

 carried off to a meadow and buried. His idea was that this was done 

 to provide a reserve store of food for hard weather. 



Possibly, however, the object of the canny birds was to make the 

 acorns better fitted for food. 



Rooks greedily pluck up the sown grains of cereals when the first 

 green blades appear. I have thought this to be because in germina- 

 tion much of the endosperm becomes sugar. 



Probably the acorn also makes more acceptable food at the period 

 of germination. 



Anyway, acorns buried by rooks, and overlooked, afford the most 

 probable explanation of the appearance of oak-seedlings at a dis- 

 tance from the parent trees. 

 6, Rutland Park, Catford, S.E., Yours faithfully, 



February 21, 1907. W. H. Griffin, 



Hon. Sec. Catford and District Natural History Society. 



