234 



MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 



and to the tyro because it is cheap and good. We strongly advise 

 all our readers interested in a popular subject to furnish themselves 

 with a copy of this excellent work, of which three parts have appeared. 

 The price is only a shilling per part, and twenty parts are to complete 

 the work.— E. C. 



NOTES— ORNITHOLOG Y. 

 The Eared Chat not a British Bird. — The reference at p. 24 of the 



* Manual of British Birds,' by Mr. Howard Saunders, to my being responsible for 

 including, erroneously, the Eared Chat(6"^zx/cci/a albicollis Vieill.) in the British List 

 of Birds pubhshed in the 'Vertebrate Fauna of Yorkshire,' demands from me 

 some notice. The inclusion of this species was obviously due to the unsatisfactory 

 state of the synonymy of several species of Saxicoliiia existing at the time of 

 publication, and which is alluded to hy Mr. Saunders and explained iit sup. I was 

 aware that Saxicola stapazina had occurred in Lancashire, and on referring to 

 that species in Mr. Dresser's admirable work on the ' Birds of Europe' (ii. p. 203) 

 found that the Black-Eared Chat was there so named. In 1881, just as we were 

 going to press, there appeared Mr. Dresser's 'List of European Birds,' in which 

 the nomenclature had been revised to date. In this list stapazina had no place, 

 but the Black-Eared Chat — the stapazina of the ' Birds of Europe ' — appeared as 

 Saxicola albicollis (Vieill. ), and thus found its way into our list. I feel in duty 

 bound to make this somewhat detailed explanation, as attention has also been 

 called elsewhere to my responsibility for the addition of a bird to the British list 

 which has not occurred in our islands. — W. Eagle Clarke, Edinburgh. 



Nesting- of the Hawfinch near Newcastle. — You will be glad to learn 

 that the Hawfinch has again successfully nested at Axwell Park, the seat of Sir 

 Henry Clavering, on the Derwent. Mr. Battensby, the joiner on the estate, told 

 me that three nests of young birds were now on the wing. — Tiios. H. Hed worth, 

 31, Spoor Street, Dunston-on-Tyne, July 2nd, 1888. 



The Solan Goose near Bridlington. — In the ' Bridlington Free Press ' 

 is a paragraph that, as Mr. R. H. Veitch, gamekeeper at Sewerby House, was 

 going his usual rounds, he observed something lying in a fallow field. On pro- 

 ceeding to it, he found it to be a specimen of the Solan Goose or Gannet [Siila 

 bassana) ; it was dead, and had about twenty yards of fishing-line entangled about 

 it, having swallowed the hook with the line attached. The bird is supposed to be 

 over four years of age, and is in splendid plumage. — Matthew Bailey, Flam- 

 borough, April 3rd, 1888. 



NOTE— GEOLOGY. 



The Evidences of Glacial Action near Ingleton. — In my report on the 

 above subject, written in October last, I surmised that the thickness of the Lower 

 Llandeilo slates at Ingleton does not exceed 6,600 — 7,000 ft., a thicknes deduced 

 from the strike of the Coniston shales below Norber and Crummock Dale on the 

 one hand and that of the same shales on the reverse side of the fold at Ingleton. 

 As these shales, however, are very much contorted and dislocated the apparent 

 strike is not always exact for any great distance. At last a band of scoriaceous 

 grit has, by its recurrence and association with felspathic ash, given me the exact 

 thickness of the Lower Llandeiloes, and what I now recognise as massive syenitic 

 Gneiss, as being 5,800 ft. The succession of Lower Silurian folds, I have also 

 identified, the first at Ingleton, the junction of first and second in Crummock Dale 

 and near Gods Bridge ; the junction of the second and third close to Horton, 

 Helm Gill, and Gawthrop ; and of the fourth and fifth near Sally Beck and Rawthey 

 Bridge. The dip of the Silurian ridge of ' grits ' in Crummock Dale must not be 

 taken as 2x\ exact clue to the dip of the Coniston shales, &c., below, owing to a 

 considerable degree of uncomformity between the Upper and Lower Silurians. 

 In relation to the term 'grits,' I must add that I do not for a moment raise the 

 question as to the ridge not being an equivalent of grits found elsewhere, but 

 personally, I must refuse to call a rock ' grit ' when it presents no lithological 

 character of a grit. — Robert B. Balderston, Ingleton, July 28th, 1888^ 



Naturalist, 



