262 
tame, it eats the Plantain and Dandelion which it finds among the 
grass, and can now digest Barley better than at first ; some of the 
Barley passes undigested, but is picked up again and devoured 
by the bird. The same thing exactly happens with Pheasants, 
they immediately pick up the corn which passes through them. 
October, 1819 . Mr. J. Scales informs me that when his 
warreners find the young of the Stock Dove in an old Eabbit- 
burrow, they fix sticks at the mouth of the hole in such manner 
as to prevent the escape of the young, but to allow the old birds 
to feed them ; and when they are in good condition they are 
taken for the table. He also tells me that an Osprey was lately 
caught in a steel trap on Mr. Hamond’s estate. Also that nineteen 
Bustards were seen together last summer on the same gentleman’s 
property. 
Mr. Oldershaw informs me that he was once shooting with a 
party, when a Coot was wounded and dived, that the time it 
stayed under water was observed by a watch to be twenty minutes ; 
when it came up it gave a great gasp, then dived again, but was 
caught at and secured. 
IX. 
ENTOMOLOGICAL NOTES, 1880 . 
By E. D. Wheeler, M.A., Ilouovary Sccf'etcu'ij. 
Read 22nd February, 1881. 
I HE past season has been, in this district, anything but a prolific 
one, from an entomologist’s jjoint of view and this is the more 
inexplicable, as the weather was, for the most ]\art, by no means 
unfavourable. Ihe laws which govern the abundance, or otherwise 
of certain local species, have yet to be discovered. 
