NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 
77 
scared it scuds to a palmetto clump, where it is safe. My experience confirms 
your correspondent as to the scarcity of earthworms ; but I fear that the author 
of the assertion as to cats refusing fish wanted to trade a feline with him. I 
have known of such a thing ; but that was because the puss in question had already 
packed enough for two cats into one cat skin, and found her fur jacket tight. 
Cleanuater Harbour, Florida. JOHN Russell Davies. 
Sagacity of a Vole. — When I was fishing last summer on the Avon I was 
much struck with the sagacity of a water-rat, or vole, as I believe they are 
rightly called. One afternoon I happened to be standing perfectly quiet on the 
bank, when I noticed a vole swimming towards me with a large apple in its 
mouth, and making straight for a hole in the exposed roots of an alder tree. 
When the small creature arrived at its destination the apple, alas ! was found too 
large to get into the opening. First it was pushed and then pulled, but all to no 
purpose, till, getting tired of this, a happy thought seemed to strike the vole, for 
taking the apple again in its mouth, it swam quickly up stream for some little 
distance, let it go, bit a piece off and swam quickly back to its nest and 
disappeared. But the prize was not intended to be abandoned, for the creature 
soon reappeared, picked up the apple, which had floated past the hole, and swam 
again with it up stream, biting a piece off as before and again disappearing. This 
happened four times, till only a small bit of apple remained, which was abandoned. 
Had the animal not taken it each time up stream, the prize would probably have 
been lost, as the current, which was in that part rather strong, would have carried 
it over a small waterfall in the time taken by the vole going into its nest. 
Bath . Beatrice Brettingham. 
Unexpected Traits in Birds (p. 29). — I have observed some similar 
traits in my canary. I have often watched him take a piece of groundsel up to a 
perch and hold it down with his foot, so as to eat it comfortably. I have had 
him about three and a-half years. He is often allowed to come out of his cage. 
One day, the hook on which his cage is hung came out of the wall, and the cage 
fell to the ground. He was not hurt, and directly I picked him up he began to 
ask, with loudchirps of a peculiar sort, what had happened. I am quite sure he 
has a language, for he makes use of different sorts of chirps on different occasions. 
For instance, if I go into the room where he lives, with a piece of chickweed or 
other green food in my hand, he utters loud notes of pleasure ; or if one of his 
perches falls down he will call till it is put up again, and the same in the evening 
when he wants his cover put on for the night. He has a very fine voice, and 
often sings so loudly as to have to be covered, and when he sees me coming 
towards him with the cover he quite screams with anger. He tries, in the 
summer time, to imitate the songs of the wild birds, I have often heard him 
practising a little phrase quite softly to himself, till he thinks he has got it right. 
He is continually adding a few fresh notes to his vocabulary. We are extremely 
fond of one another, and if anyone else cleans his cage, he notices it directly, and 
asks why ; or if I leave his cage on the table and go out of the room, he calls 
loudly to be hung up again, and he does not like to have the door of the room 
left open for long. 
Hampstead, W. IV. Mary Geddes. 
Weather Lore — On p. 35 you mention a North Bucks rhyme which you say 
you have not met with in print. You can find it, with a slight variation, in 
The Lady Overseer, a Pamphlet, ■with Notes on Country Life, Natural History, 
and Women s Rights, by a “ Female Freeholder, Farmer, and late Parish 
Officer,” published at Leamington, 1874. The authoress (now dead) was a native 
of, and resident in, .South Northamptonshire, and gives the rhyme thus : — 
“ .Sow your beans on David and Chad, 
If the weather be good, or the weather be bad ; 
If you don’t sow them before Benedic, 
You had better, I ween, have them all in the rick.” 
My copy of the pamphlet was presented to me by the authoress, a really clever 
though perhaps slightly eccentric lady, who in early life was a frequent visitor, 
with her father (an intimate friend of Charles Waterton), at Walton Hall. Her 
