SELBORNIANA . 77 
as such, unpledged, has shown that there is room for an inner association which 
admits only vowed abstainers from bird-wearing. 
We have always understood that Mr. Morris’s “Plumage League” was 
absorbed as the “ Plumage Section of the Selborne Society.” See a letter by 
Mr. G. A. Musgrave in the Selborne Magazine for June, 1888. But the ques- 
tion of pledged abstinence from using the bodies of slain birds as a personal 
adornment is entirely one for ladies ; for men such a promise would be clearly 
absurd. The wearing of the corpses of fowls in their hats is one sin, at any 
rate, which, with the present fashions in head-gear, the male sex cannot possibly 
commit ; and it would be a rash man who would undertake to give such a pledge 
for his sisters, his cousins and his aunts, to say nothing of his wife ! 
As to the name of such a society, that suggested by Mr. Morris is immeasur- 
ably the better. To assume such a very ambitious title as “ The Society for the 
Protection of Birds ” for a band of ladies who do nothing but abstain from 
personal iniquity in the matter of bonnets, may give occasion to the unrighteous 
to scoff. The “ protection ” afforded reminds one irresistibly of that schoolboy 
who said that pins, in addition to other valuable qualities, “saved thousands 
of lives — by people not swallowing them.”] 
Swallows in February. — Is it not possible that the swallows which Mr. 
Macklin observed as having lined their nests and laid one egg by the 23rd of 
February, at St. Erney in Cornwall, had hibernated with us and never crossed the 
sea at all ? We know that Gilbert White supposed that they did so occasionally, 
and others have observed the same. I myself saw a swallow flying about the 
road near Poole, in Dorset, on the first Sunday after Christmas in 1S58. If a few 
pairs had from any cause been induced to stay behind last autumn and remain 
with us dormant through the winter, the lovely bright and warm weather in 
February last might easily tempt them to think that their proper breeding season 
had arrived. But I cannot think that any would be tempted to cross the sea so 
long before their time, and especially not to do so this year, as their instinct would 
forewarn them of the fearful weather that was so soon to come upon us. I have 
several times seen swallows in this county before the end of March, and once in 
1852, while shooting with a friend in the fens in Cambridgeshire on the 28th of 
February, we saw a flock of sandmartins flying about. Whether these had 
hibernated or not I do not pretend to say, but the sandmartin is generally the 
earliest of the swallow tribe to make his appearance. 
Modbtiry Vicarage, S. Devon. G. C. Green. 
Frogs as Weather Prophets. — In reference to Miss Fowler’s article 
on “ Frogs and Toads” in the Dec. No. of Nature Notes, may I ask you to 
insert the following short extract taken from an article entitled “The Wisest of 
Weather Prophets,” appearing in the Covent Garden Magazine for August, 1880: — 
Those buffos among the animal musicians, the Batrachians, croak fearfully and 
change their yellow vest for a coat of russet when rain is impending. A writer 
who signed his paper “ The Old Bushman,” stated that in Sweden a tree frog 
in the pairing season made a noise like the ringing of a bell, and as the sound 
proceeded from under the water he was often deceived : the notes coming appar- 
ently from a long distance off, when the frogs were, in reality, only a few yards 
away. 
Zoo. 
Primrose-grubbing. — We have received several letters from correspondents 
apprehensive for the fate, on the approaching festive day, of what is their favourite 
flower, if it was not Lord Beaconstield’s. But the question was so fully discussed 
this time last year in Nature Notes that we are not able to do more than to 
urge all our readers, of whatever shade of political opinion, to do all in their 
power to prevent April 19th from being a day of indignation and disgust to 
every true lover of Nature. 
Corrections. — The Rev. F. O. Morris kindly calls attention to a slip in 
last month's Nature Notes, p. 54, in which Waterton’s “Wanderings in South 
America” is misprinted “South Africa.” Mr. Morris asks us to mention 
another passage (p. 167 of the edition reviewed) in addition to that quoted, in 
