NEWS. 



199 



abundant there) and discovered Grimmia 

 commutata in company with G. le%ico2)hcca, 

 G. trichophylla , and a form of G. Doni- 

 ana. G. commutata ^^ueb. belongs to the 

 section Commutatce of the genus Grimmia 

 in Bry. Eur. and is alluded to in Bry. 

 Brit, at p. 161. It is Dicranum ovale, 

 Hedw. , and is dioicous (the fruit has not yet 

 been found in Britain), and has leaves with 

 inflexed margins. On Kinnoull and 

 Moncrief Hills I have discovered another 

 Grimmia, which Mr. Wilson informs me 

 maybe G.alpestris, Schw., a species new 

 to Britain; I shall however say nothing more 

 of this at present. I shall have much pleasure 

 in sending a specimen of G. commutata to 

 any botanist.— F. Buchanan White, 

 M.D., Perth, October 26th, 1865. 



Massacre of Small Birds in France. — 

 At a recent agricultural meeting in France, 

 the Archbishop of Bordeaux (Cardinal 

 Donnet) gave some statistical details in 

 order to show the injury done to the agri- 

 culturist by the wholesale massacre of 

 small birds ; it was formerly calculated 

 that in spring time there was no less than 

 10,000 bird's nests in each square league. 

 Now we know that every nest contains on 

 an average four young ones. Well, then, 

 it has been shown that each of these little 

 ones requires for its daily consumption 15 

 worms, and that the parents require for 

 their share 60 ; making a total of 120 

 insects for the daily consumption of each 

 nest. If you multiply 120 worms by 

 10,000 nests, you have a total of 1,200,000 

 worms destroyed every day, or 36,000,000 

 in a month. 36,000,000 worms ! Have 

 you reflected that those 36,000,000 worms, 

 if you do not respect the existence of these 

 poor birds that comsume them, will in 

 turn eat up the leaves, the flowers, and the 

 fruits of our trees as well as the produce of 

 our kitchen gardens. Neither should we 

 forget that the insects and the parasitic 

 plants of which these birds would rid us, 

 levy an impost nearly double the property 



tax. Bear in mind that the present year 

 the caterpillars have done such damage to 

 the cabbages that this vegetable has dis- 

 appeared from our tables, and that these 

 insects have been equally in the pine 

 woods." 



The Domestication of Bees and Hawks 

 in England. — The domestication of Bees 

 was attempted early in the seventh century. 

 The clergy earnestly encouraged it, teach- 

 ing that bees " had been sent from heaven, 

 because the mass of God could not be 

 celebrated without wax." About the mid- 

 dle of the tenth century, slaves whose duty 

 it was exclusively to attend to bees, and 

 were called beesherds, were ordinarily 

 attached to wealthy establishments ; and 

 from the position of slaves they soon 

 became servile tenants, whom their lords 

 provided with a stock of bees, for which 

 they paid a fixed amount of produce for 

 life, the swarms continuing the property of 

 the lord. We also find about this time 

 the Anglo-Saxon word hee cest (bee chest) 

 and the Latin alvearia (beehives) usually 

 substituted for " rusca" from which it 

 may be inferred that these rough construc- 

 tions were superseded by regular hives. 

 Not long afterwards the clergy induced 

 Edward the Confessor to tithe beehives — 

 an evidence that they had become nume- 

 rous and valuable, which is confirmed by 

 " Domesday Book," where they are re- 

 peatedly mentioned. The first mention of 

 Hawks occurs in documents of the eighth 

 century, when two falcons were sent by 

 Boniface, Bishop of Mons, to Ethelbert, 

 King of Mercia, which induced a Kentish 

 king to apply to the same prelate for a si- 

 milar present, and, in doing so, he stated 

 that he could not obtain hawks of the 

 quality he required in his own kingdom. 

 From about this time the kings and nobles 

 laboured to domesticate hawks, though at 

 first in very limited numbers, and with no 

 great skill. They formed, nevertheless, a 

 regular part of their establishment. In 

 the tenth century the custom of more com- 

 pletely training them was introduced, and 



