NATURAL til STORY NOTES 
57 
could see no birds, though the notes were unmistakable. Tliis 
is the only time I have heard the ringed plover in London. 
It has always been one of my favourite birds. It is hard to 
e.xplain why we should like one species of bird more than 
another. But the note of the ringed plover is delicious ; and 
this has certainly a good deal to do with it. Our likes and 
dislikes for our fellow human beings depend to a very great 
e.xtent upon the tone of voice in which they speak to us. 
On August i6, I saw a whitethroat in Kensington Gardens, 
and also noticed that some moorhens had built quite a large 
nest on a floating board near the Island in the Serpentine. On 
the i8th, I saw another whitethroat and a willow wren in the 
Gardens ; and shortly after this, when the temperature had 
rendered life in London intolerable, I left and bicycled through 
Brittany. 
Since my return Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park have 
not presented anything interesting in the way of birds beyond a 
dabchick which was swimming about near the Island on October 
23. Perhaps it was one of the birds which are seen so regularly 
in St. James’s Park. 
It is rather disappointing to find that I have no notes for 
1898 relating to the brown owl, for this species was seen and 
heard pretty frequently in the neighbourhood of Kensington 
Gardens and Campden Hill in 1897. If the birds still frequent 
the district, it is strange that I have heard nothing of them 
by night, for their habits are almost as nocturnal as my own. 
Gloucester Terrace, Hyde Park, IF. A. Holte Macpherson. 
January 13, 1899. 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Pets and Consumption. — Professor Symes Thompson, in a recent lecture 
at Gresham College, stated that rats, dogs, cats, and cage-birds, all conveyed to 
us the seeds of tuberculosis — cage-birds especially nursing the seeds of cancer 
and consumption. 
Squirrel. — We have two squirrels in our garden sufficiently tame to come 
to boxes supplied with Barcelona nuts set for them on the steps of two French 
windows. About six or seven feet above these bo.ves, cocoa-nuts are fastened in 
the wired walls for the tits. To-day one of the squirrels climbed up the wire 
as far as one of the cocoa-nuts, which is placed to hang downwards to prevent 
sparrows getting to it, put its head in at the opening and ate some of the nut. 
This is the first time a squirrel has been noticed doing this, so I send this 
account wondering if any of your readers having experience of squirrels’ habits, 
have ever noticed this done. (Mrs.) Raxdles. 
Bryn An, of Wrexham. 
Frogs and Toads. — For fifteen or sixteen years I have watched the habits 
of a number of frogs in a fountain basin, and as far as my observation goes, 
I have never seen them come to the surface of the w'ater during three or four 
of the winter months, except on one or two occasions, when the weather was 
unusually mild. They mate very early (beginning of December), and continue 
attached till the spawning season is over, about the third week in March. 
Occasionally they move about at the bottom of the water, but unless disturbed 
are so like, the mud, a casual observer would not know there were living creatures 
there. I notice they do not breed till five years old, and as I destroy the spawn. 
