NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
135 
subject from the pen of such a recognised authority as Mr. Witchell. As an 
e.Kample of the musical illustrations, which, the author suggests, should be first 
played on the piano and then whistled, we give, by permission of the publisher, 
the various strains of the nightingale here recorded. The second of the.se is, we 
are told, “one of the commonest, and it is given in any interval between a third 
and an octave. Curiously enough, this strain, given with the tone of the nightin- 
gale, constitutes the entire song of a bush-warbler in Western Canada, where 
bird-songs are few and far between. The third strain shows how the nightingale 
sometimes elaborates a little call-note into his lovely long notes ; and the 
inference is that the transition which the bird now effects in five seconds 
may have taken the species five ages to traverse in acquiring its characteristic 
long notes.” The book has an index, which makes us more tolerant of the 
author’s awkward classification of his subject. It might, we think, be worth the 
publisher’s while to issue so useful a handbook in a cloth cover. 
Hey, for the Holidays ! By Walker Miles. R. E. Taylor & Son. Price fid. 
This little book, which may serve to usefully wile away an hour in the train, 
contains, besides some general hints on holiday making, three samples of Mr. 
“Walker Miles’s” admirably practical rambling guides, from Shalford to Putten- 
ham and Guildford, from .Maidstone to I^eeds Castle and the Ilollingbourne 
Caves, and from Balcombe to East Grinstead. To these are appended a lengthy 
effusion in verse. 
Science- Gossip for June contains the beginning of “ A History of Chalk,” by 
E. A. Martin, F.G.S. 
The Animals' Friend for June has the first instalment of a paper on “ Butter- 
flies and their Uses.” 
In The Teachers' Review for June, Mr. Walter Johnson, of Battersea, con- 
tinues “ A year’s Nature Notes in a London School.” 
Received ; — Animal World for May and June ; Our Animal Friends, 
Humanity, Knos.vledge, The Naturalist, The Irish Naturalist, and The Agricul- 
tural Economist for June. 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Curious Nesting Places.— At this season the papers are full of letters as 
to eccentric nesting places chosen by birds. The Star of May ifi has an illustra- 
tion of the carcase of a cat hung on a tree in Bromley Wood, Kent, chosen by a 
wren as a suitable nesting site. The Midland Free Press of May 20 gives a 
drawing of a tom-tit’s nest in the interior of a dry pump. Robins seem to be 
ecclesiastically minded. The Rev. J. W. F. Walker writes from St. Stephen’s 
Vicarage, Tovil, Maidstone, to the Standard: “Yesterday the drawing-room 
window had been left open all day, and the room was unoccupied. In the 
evening, when the window was being closed, a considerable amount of litter, 
in the form of dry leaves, &c., was noticed on the floor. The reason of this 
being investigated, it was discovered that a pair of robins had selected a corner 
of the mantelpiece, behind a photograph frame, as a convenient nesting place, 
and during the day they had accumulated enough material to fill an ordinary dust- 
pan. Fond as we are of birds, we were reluctantly compelled to forbid this 
invasion on the part of the robins.” 
In the same paper a few days before it was recorded that some robins have 
recently built nests in no fewer than three of the organ pipes in St. Augustin’s 
Church, Bournemouth. At first the choir boys were remonstrated with for bringing 
rubbish into the church, but the sexton eventually discovered that the offenders 
were robins, who were seen to enter by the sanctuary window whenever it was 
open and fly down to the organ. They entered by the “ slot ” at the base of the 
pipes, and an examination discovered three nests which were nearly completed 
