234 
NATURE NOTES. 
with their necks broken, their legs twisted into all sorts of impossible shapes, their 
feathers dyed with all sorts of flashy colours ; nay, worse than that, the head 
of one sort of bird stuck on to the body of another sort, and the legs of another. 
Nothing could be more hideous, nothing more glaringly vulgar.” 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Birds at Brighton. — A Brighton reader writes : “ I hardly know whether 
the event I am about to record warrants me in taking up your valuable space, but 
the sudden appearance of some seventy missel-thrushes in a small grass field at 
the east end of Brighton, used by the boys of a neighbouring school for cricket 
and football, is, as far as my limited experience goes, very unusual. Last February 
a sharp frost set in after a stormy night, the ground was covered with snow, and 
when under the influence of the sun’s rays the surface of the field again showed 
green, these birds appeared on the scene, and remained for several hours busily 
occupied in feeding upon the worms, that seemed to be very plentiful. 
“A flock of starlings that frequent the place was also there, and I noticed 
several small birds, with light breasts like flycatchers, that the thrushes chased 
from the ground. The birds were finally driven away by some boys who got into 
the field by climbing the wall, and tried — I am glad to say unsuccessfully — to kill 
some of the visitors with stones. 
“ There is but little cover here for birds in the gardens of St. Mary Hall and 
Sussex Square, and the bird catchers give them no chance of undisturbed rest on 
the Downs.” 
A Wounded Snail. — This morning, as I walked along the street, I saw 
upon a cement wall a common snail. It was hideously ugly, even for a snail, yet 
I stopped to observe and even to admire it, for it revealed an episode of snail life 
of no small interest. It had evidently grown to maturity with a shell of dusky 
mottled brown ; the strong lip surrounding the edge showed that its period of 
growth had finished, when it met with an accident so severe that probably few 
of its race would have survived. Apparently it had fallen from a considerable 
height on the hard path. At all events, with one blow nearly half its shell had 
been entirely detached and was gone ; the mouth was uninjured, and with a large 
fragment of the last year’s growth remained ; but the whole had been forcibly 
dislocated and was thrown completely out of its proper spiral. Never was snail 
in more evil case, and yet lived to tell the tale. 
Did you ever observe an injured snail, how it surveys the broken pieces of its 
shell, and does its best to get things in order again ? There are snails and snails ; 
some make a neat job, others patch up in a slovenly fashion ; but seldom has a 
snail with anything like the same extent of injury repaired its covering so 
dexterously. From its back, it is true, there projects, like a frill, the sharp 
broken edge of the original fracture ; but beneath, exactly in its true curve, is the 
new' shell, no longer ornamented with the former colouring, but grey, rough, and 
scarlike, yet still a hard, serviceable covering, and so fairly carrying out the 
original design, that few passers by would have noticed anything amiss. The upper 
part of the new shell is fitted exactly to the old piece, so that it is difficult to tell 
which is old work and which new. But the most curious thing is that a perfectly 
new mouth has been formed in a most ingenious manner. The old mouth is left 
as in a murex, and the newly-formed shell is worked round in its proper curve, 
and an irregular but fairly constructed mouth has completed the animal’s labours. 
R. Hudson. 
Bellicose Birds. — An encounter between a partridge and cock pheasant 
W’as new to me, and possibly may be to some of your many readers, so I venture 
to send you the following short account of what I witnessed last spring. My 
attention and interest were aroused by the persistent calling of a partridge within 
thirty yards of me in some long grass ; it was so frequently repeated, without 
waiting for any reply, that I thought something unusual must be happening, when 
