MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. 
105 
Hen-harriers breed on the ground, and seem never to settle 
on trees. 
When redstarts shake their tails they move them horizontally, 
as dogs do when they fawn : the tail of a wagtail, when in motion, 
bobs up and down like that of a jaded horse.* 
Hedge-sparrows have a remarkable flirt with their wings in 
breeding-time ; as soon as frosty mornings come they make a 
very plaintive piping noise. 
Many birds which become silent about Midsummer reassume 
their notes again in September ; as the thrush, blackbird, wood- 
lark, willow-wren, &c. ; hence August is by much the most mute 
month, the spring, summer, and autumn through. Are birds 
induced to sing again because the temperament of autumn re- 
sembles that of spring ? 
Linn^us ranges plants geographically ; palms inhabit the tro- 
pics, grasses the temperate zones, and mosses and lichens the 
polar circles ; no doubt animals may be classed in the same 
manner with propriety. 
House-sparrows build under eaves in the spring ; as the wea- 
ther becomes hotter they get out for coolness, and nest in plum- 
trees and apple-trees. These birds have been known sometimes 
to build in rooks* nests, and sometimes in the forks of boughs 
under rooks' nests. 
As my neighbour wsls housing a rick he observed that his 
dogs devoured ail the little red mice that they could catch, but 
termed, would seem to be distinct, but has not been very satisfactorily made out. The largest 
and coirinionest species is the sharp-nosed eel {A- acutirostris) t which has been known to attain a 
length of six feet three inches, but more usually averages from two to three feet, its appearaiice 
is too weM known to need description. The broad-nosed eel {A- latirostris) is also plentiful, and 
at once distinguishable from the last by means of the character from which it has been named; 
it is also smaller, and has not been known to exceed five pounds in weight, whereas the other 
sonietifv.es attains to thirty pounds. Mr. Yarrell has observed important structural distinctions 
" ill the size and character of the bones «f the head and vertebrae, those of the present species 
beiitg nearly as large again as the same parts of the A- aculii'ostris in examples of the same lesigth." 
A- uudiorostris, the Hampshire species, is much smaller than either, with a head of intermediate 
form, as its name imports. It is also more slender and elongated, in proportion to its depth and 
thickness, than either ot the preceding species, in addition to which it presents some osteo- 
logical peculiarities, and is said to differ from the others in being more diurnal in its habits. It 
rarely exceeds half a pound in weight, and is provincially termed the snig eel. The grig eel is 
described by Mrs. Bo^vd'tch to be the smallest of the genus, and " is caught plentifully in the 
Tha-raes, but more especially in Berkshire and Oxfordshire." Mr. Yarrell's investigations leave 
little or no doubt that eels are oviparous. — E». 
* With ail deference to Mr. White, he is decidedly wrong in this particular, as I have many 
times had occasion to observe, both by keeping redstarts in confinement and watching them in the 
wild state through a glass. They move the tail perpendicularly, but not at all in the manner of 
a wagtail, the motion being rapid and of slight extent, and repeated after every movement of the 
bird ; or the tail sometimes hangs and shakes as if quite loose and ready to fall off, which latter 
1 have not observed in the black species {phcenicura tithys), though I have the former. It is a 
habit very characteristic of the genus. — Ed. 
