90 
fancy to certain entomological specimens kept in his room, and if 
a drawer was left open where they were pinned out, he would 
swallow them, pins and all, but the remains were always thrown 
up afterwards in the pellet fornu 
Abundance of Quails. — The chief point of Ornithological 
interest, in N"orfolk, during the past year, has been the extra- 
ordinary number of quails met with by sportsmen in the early 
part of the shooting season, exceeding anything of which we 
have any previous record. Of late years this species has unques- 
tionably decreased in this county, except in the now drained 
district of our western fens, but during the summer and autumn 
of 1870, they would seem to have been scattered over the entire 
county, and in the fens alone at least two or three hundred birds 
were killed and over a thousand eggs taken. 
Trom the records of late in Natural History Journals it is 
evident that this extraordinary influx was by no means con- 
fined to Norfolk, and an effort has been made by the Editor of 
the “ Zoologist ” to obtain, if possible, a “ census ” of the quails 
observed during the past year throughout the United King- 
dom, in order to form some idea of the numbers bred in this 
country, and of their general distribution. As shown by Mr. Dix’s 
note in the “Zoologist,” (S. S., p. 2394,) the numbers killed in 
Pembrokeshire and Cardigan far exceeded even those in Norfolk, 
but certainly no other counties have afforded any similar returns. 
As to the cause of so extraordinary a flight of these continental 
migrants, alighting on the shores of Great Britain and re- 
maining also to breed in such unprecedented numbers, I can- 
not at present venture to hazard an opinion. 
Henry Stevenson. 
Notes from New Zealand. Taranaki. — The story you refer 
to about our small birds having diminished in consequence of 
being stung by bees, is not substantiated. This much is true, 
that many tribes of birds, such as bell birds, green paroquets 
