332 



CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 



description of the " Long-tailed Tit " is perfectly in accordance with 

 my own and every other person's observations : with the nest the case 

 is different ; we cannot but acknowledge here, that the learned author 

 of the foregoing remarks has fallen into a mistake of no little conse- 

 quence. Had he examined, as he should have done, the nest of this 

 highly interesting little bird, he would have discovered that it has but 

 one opening, and that near the top. Had he even employed the com- 

 mon substitute of the generality of writers, book-study, he would have 

 seen that naturalists have seldom, if ever, given credence to the tale. 

 I need not here give a description of the nest ; it has already been done 

 in your " Architecture of Birds." 



But the nature of my pursuits will not allow me to proceed further 

 in these observations. If they are found worthy of a place in your 

 Magazine, I may venture to trouble you with a few more of the same 

 description. 



Plymouth, April, 1833. Observator. 



Does the whirl wig-beetle (gyrinus natator) live through 

 the winter ? — I do not remember ever to have observed these little 

 beetles, sporting in the sunshine during the colder months of winter, 

 but having found a couple of them on the 1 7th of last December, I car- 

 ried them home alive in a bottle of water, which I placed in a warm 

 room, and in which they lived until the 22nd of February. As they had 

 lived so long in confinement, I conjectured that it might be their nature 

 to live through the winter, and that they might possibly have escaped 

 my observation during that season. But desirous of obtaining proof of 

 their living so long exposed to the chill open air, I removed the bottle 

 and its contents, and hung it up to the wall outside the window. On 

 the following day, when I looked at them, I found them lying upon 

 their backs quite lifeless, at the bottom of the phial, killed, most proba- 

 bly, by the severity of the night. I might have considered this as a 

 sufficient proof that they do not live through the winter, did I not 

 think that possibly the sudden transition from a warm room to a cold 

 atmosphere, might have had a deadly effect upon them, and it did not 

 disprove that they might perhaps have borne it without suffering, had 

 they always been kept in the open air. But as these ideas are anything 

 but satisfactory, I submit it as a query to your readers, whether this in- 

 sect is to be found throughout the winter, and if so, does it during that 

 season, swim upon the surface, or conceal itself by retiring into the mud 

 under water ? 



London, April, 1833. Solitarius. 



