424 
NOTES TO THE 
An unfortunate misprint once sent a number of " Sunday out " 
people of Carlisle to the house of a valued correspondent of 
Land and Water. It appeared from the newspaper that there 
were three hundred owls feeding in the front of his laion; this mis- 
statement was accounted for by the fact that when the paper 
was being printed off the letter "f" fell out in front of the 
word " owls," which, of course, should have been three hundred 
fowls. 
An owl-call can be made thus : Bend up all the fingers of the 
right hand, clasp them tight with the fingers of the left, leaving 
a hollow; crook the two thumbs so as to leave a crack: blow 
sharp into the hollow. The call will act better if the hands are 
wetted. I learnt this from a jagd-meister in a forest n(^ar 
Giessen, when studying chemistry there with Professor Liebig. 
This jagd-meister used to conceal himself in a bush and call up 
the poor roe deer to be shot, with what he calls a "geiss blat," 
or roe-deer call. It was made with tin, like the stop of a 
bassoon. 
At page 124 AYhite says his " owls hoot in B flat." I really wish 
that some good musician would go to the Zoological Gardens and 
put into writing the various notes sounded by the animals and 
birds. In April 1875 I made a splendid cast of an elephant's trunk, 
also casts of sections of it. The trunk is used by its owner as a 
musical instrument. Visitors at the Zoological Gardens may often 
have heard a curious musical trumpeting by the female elephant 
when she is eating her fresh hay. As I was anxious to know 
what this note was in music, my friend Mr. 0. H. Walker, or- 
ganist of the Eev. Mr. Stuart's church, Munster-square, has 
kindly been up to see what he could luake of it ; he has hit it 
off exactly, and has played it to me on Mr. Stuart's beautiful 
organ. He tells me it is the lowest A in the bass on an organ 
which goes down to double C. He uses the " Bourdon " stop 
coupled with the double open diapason on the great organ. Mr. 
Walker tells me that the higher note of the elephant when 
trumpeting is C sharp. The musical note of the elephant when 
eating is almost exactly imitated by striking gently and con- 
tinuously and simultaneously the two lowest A A in the base on 
an ordinary piano. Eeader, try it. 
Mortality AMONG Martins from Parasites, p. 142. — The Eev, 
F. 0. Morris thus writes in Land and Wader : — I received the fol- 
lowing the other day from Lieut.-Colonel Ward, of Bannerdown 
House, Wiltshire, dating from Eossiniere, Canton Vaud, Switzer- 
land : — " Having only recently seen in the Times of some time ago 
your letter on the mortality among martins, and having observed 
