CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 215 



would hold them. I believe I also captured a specimen of the bird 

 described as having an appearance and size between the nightingale and 

 common white-throat, but it died the next day. It was in the autumn 

 that I used these nooses, and without any bait, but I have do doubt in 

 building time the hair would itself be a bait ; and birds do not seem to 

 have the least fear of it. The nooses might be used like a net in an 

 open part of a hedgerow, and the birds driven into them. I have no 

 doubt the sedge bird might be very easily caught by driving him up and 

 down a drain, and having a number of nooses suspended from a string 

 across ; and also those warblers which frequent furze, as the Dartford 

 warbler, furze chit, &c. might possibly be taken. I am very little of 

 an. entomologist, and I therefore should like to elicit from some of 

 your correspondents this coming summer, a mode of breeding particular 

 sorts of insects, in addition to the common meal worm, for the feeding of 

 summer birds. C. W. S. 



Stepney. 



Habits op swallows previous to migration. — For several 

 years past I have observed, that after the swallows have reared their 

 young, and they are become strong on the wing, they assemble in vast 

 quantities on the roofs of the highest houses, from which they fly off at 

 a given signal made by some of the flock (no doubt by the old birds, 

 which may be thus expressed, twit, twit, twit, repeated several times in 

 succession), and perform their various evolutions in the air. After 

 being absent a short time they return again : this practice is kept 

 up for several days : after which they may be seen sporting in the 

 fields, and frequently alighting on trees and bushes. A day or two 

 previous to their departure they assemble in a large flock, and at night 

 roost on the willows and trees in an adjoining marsh, near the sea- 

 shore, at a short distance from the town. I have observed them in this 

 place of an evening, in the beginning of October, and the day after 

 there was not more than two or three to be seen ; so that I concluded 

 they must have migrated in the night, or very early the next morning, 

 as I was on the spot shortly after daybreak. 



After having made the above observations four years since, I saw, on 

 a fine day in the depth of winter, a solitary swallow (H. rustica) skim- 

 ming the surface of a pond. The weather for some time before had 

 been very cold. This bird must have remained in a state of torpidity 

 for several weeks previous to the time I saw it. 



Penzance, Cornwall, Feb. 5, 1884. 



F F 2 



