640 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
vening. As the spring advances the display ceases ; he loses 
his moustachial plumes about July, and appears to moult before 
the hens. They are never incapable of flight during the period 
of moulting. 
By autumn the male has quite lost his chestnut pectoral band 
and thick inflated neck, which is now no larger than that of the 
females ; indeed his plumage is almost indistinguishable from 
theirs. He has lately become very pugnacious — I might almost 
say savage — attacking me so fiercely whenever I enter the run 
that I have to carry a wire guard to keep him off. He will 
fasten on to clothing with his beak and hold on tenaciously ; 
and, when in these tempers, makes a deep guttural sound 
something like a hoarse cough quickly repeated, and ending in 
a faint scream. — E. J. H. Eldred. 
Note on a Willow Log exhibited at the September 
Meeting by Mr. A. J. Rudd. — A White Willow, blown down 
in St. Augustine’s Churchyard in August, 1912, showed, when 
cut into logs and split for the manufacture of cricket bats, a 
dark coloured cavity filled with roots, at nine-and-a-half feet 
from the base, immediately below a fork. The log deprived of 
its bark had a diameter of sixteen inches ; the cleft measured 
thirteen by twenty-one inches, with a maximum gape of one- 
and-a-half inches. There was said to have been no external 
evidence of injury. The phenomenon of a tangled mass of 
roots in the heart of the tree was due to a fracture at the fork : 
the usual effort had been made to repair the damage by a growth 
of “callus,” which, instead of closing over the wound, penetrated 
the rupture at one place. Contact with water that had collected 
in the cavity, and absence of light, were stimuli sufficient to 
induce a growth of roots from the edge of the “ callus,” which 
eventually packed the hollow. Some evidence as to the age of 
the injury is afforded by subsequent developments ; the strain 
ruptured the cortical tissues as well as the wood, and probably 
eight or ten years were required to obliterate external evidence 
of this. The wood was discoloured but no serious decay had 
set in. Had the tree stood, it would have needed but a few 
