i 82 
NATURE NOTES. 
This pretty little animal is not so rare as is sometimes supposed. 
It makes an interesting pet, for the changes it undergoes before 
and after the breeding season are even more marked than in the 
other newts. Next is a globe containing several of the great 
water beetle, fierce and cannibalistic, and another jar contains a 
few of the much-sought-after diving spider. A viper treated as 
a rarity, for it bears a specially written ticket announcing that it 
was captured in the New Forest, occupies a small aquarium, 
whilst a similar vessel contains a mixed tangle of green snakes 
and slow-worms. 
Passing along we come to^ a shop which makes a speciality 
of cats and pigeons, with just a few rabbits and a small assort- 
ment of the parrot family to fill up ; and a door or two off is a 
fine reynard, who is probably as happy in his small cage as if he 
were struggling for life in order to give amusem'ent to red-coated 
gentlemen and gentle-minded dames. Here, too, are a few hedge- 
hogs, and fanc}’ rats and mice in plenty. A young squirrel is 
spinning round in his wheel so rapidly that the eye can scarce!}'' 
follow, but its action gives no idea of the natural grace of its 
movements when at liberty among the trees. A. pair of mar- 
mosets huddled together look so miserable that one almost 
suspects that they realise they are under sentence of death, and 
that in a few days — unless they fall into the hands of a kind 
and thoughtful purchaser — they must sicken and die, as scores 
of their unfortunate race have done before. 
But it is for its cage birds that the Dials is famous, and 
Sunday morning is its festival. Then the resident bird fanciers 
are reinforced bv itinerant vendors, who trade from trucks and 
stalls in the cheaper kind of birds. Linnets and red-poles are 
their chief stock, but often birds with plumage unknown to 
naturalists, and colours that will not wash, are passed off to the 
unwary as valuable specimens of rare species. The sweetest 
songsters of our land can be bought here at all seasons, and 
at prices ranging from a few pence to many shillings, and in 
some cases even pounds. Blackbirds, thrushes, robins and 
chaffinches abound. The Wild Birds Protection Act prohibits 
the capture and sale of most wild birds from IMarch to August, 
and this law, if stringently carried out, would prevent the sale 
of nearly all the migratory birds. But with few exceptions 
all the songsters, particularly nightingales and blackcaps, can 
be purchased here in the early spring, and it is quite clear, 
from the small army of bird catchers seen in the country 
around London, that there is a ready and profitable market for 
these and other birds. The mortality among the captured is 
enormous. One dealer admitted that out of the thirty nightin- 
gales he had last spring, tv,'enty-seven died, and he did not seem 
to consider himself very unfortunate in this respect. To Sel- 
bornians such figures are inexpressibly sad, and one almost 
wonders of what materials are bird catchers made that they 
can inflict, without remorse, such suffering upon harmless birds. 
