36 
NATURE NOTES 
ill-adapted for life in cage or aviary, and I think we ought to do all we can to 
discourage their capture. There are other species, such as the wren, the chiff- 
chaff, and the willow-warbler, which endure captivity so badly. . . . that 
their capture seems almost undesirable. ... So long as their confinement 
leads to the death of nine out of ten within a few weeks, and ninety-nine out of a 
hundred within a few months, it appears mere cruelty to cage them.” 
Science Work for December is the first number of what, we are convinced, will 
prove a very valuable “ monthly review of scientific literature.” It is issued, 
towards the end of the month, at '^d., or 2s. 6d. per annum prepaid, by Messrs. 
Robert Aikman & Co., 20, Shudehill, Manchester, under the editorship of 
Mr. Waller Jeffs. We wish it every success. 
In Knowledge for January, besides the other contents, as varied as usual, our 
vice-president, the Right Hon. Sir Edward Fry, and our branch secretary, Miss 
Agnes Fry, begin an account of the Mycetozoa, those living things which nobody, 
as yet, can with certainty classify as either plants or animals. “ Some intimates 
of these strange ‘beings,’” say the authors, “try to get over the difficulty 
by inventing pet names, and call them ‘ myxos,’ or ‘ myxies,’ and, on the whole, 
we incline to adopt the latter word. It is short, and it rhymes with ‘ pixies.’ ” 
Science Gossip, which now is able to boast that at no. Strand, it, alone 
among scientific magazines, has its own premises, contains in its January number 
a letter of inquiry from Mr. M. J. Teesdale, anent the rare phenomenon of 
iridescence observed on the surface of Lake Windermere in October last. 
Among the various interesting articles, which, in addition to a most liberal 
supply of notes and news, mark the beginning of the life of Natn.ral Science in its 
new Edinburgh home, the palm must, we think, be given to Prof. Sollas’s 
“Funafuti: The Study of a Coral Atoll,” his Friday evening discourse to the 
British Association at Bristol. It appears strange that no address of editor 
or publisher, beyond “ Young J. Pentland, Edinburgh and London,” appears on 
the magazine. 
Received. — The Naturalist and The Irish Naturalist for January. 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Obituary. — Recently, deeply lamented, at Lyndhurst, Hants, the 
emu, formerly the property of the Hon. Gerald Lascelles. As its death 
is stated to have been caused by swallowing a screw of tobacco stolen 
from a workman’s coat pocket, this fatality is a sad example at once of 
the misuse of tobacco and of the neglect of the laws of nieum and tuum. 
Popular Natural History. — “Oh, Uncle Rufus, do look at these tad- 
poles in this ])ool ; and to think that some day all those horrid, wriggling things 
will be butterflies !” — Windsor Magazine. 
The Mild Winter. — As might be expected, we have received many in- 
stances of the exceptional mildness of the winter. A sparrow’s nest and a 
blackbird’s nest, each containing eggs, found in Lord Salisbury’s park at Hatfield ; 
honey-bees in search of honey and thrushes and redwings in full song, observed 
by Mr. J. Hiam, on January 9, at Kedditch ; a slow-worm on a gravel path on 
January 8, the snowdrop (Galanthus AVrt/tjj/) in flower on the same date, and two 
young rabbits found drowned on the 9th at Clitheroe, according to the testimony 
of Mr. G. B. Milne-Rcdhead ; and the note we print below from Mr. Warner, 
of Abingdon, on the toad, are instances. 
