86 
NATURE NOTES. 
which Sir Robert Ball discourses to us so freely and so delight- 
fully. We follow him with much interest when he shows us, 
by exact mathematical demonstration, that the ice-cap shifts 
periodically from the one pole to the other, the astronomer’s 
pendulum beating ages as the clock’s pendulum beats seconds. 
And imagination tries to picture the state of the North Pole 
when the last glacial age had shifted to the south ; or what 
might have happened when the pendulum swung back again, 
and the increasing ice and advancing waters entombed, perhaps, 
all these mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses in the Treasure- 
islands where we now find their remains. 
Richmond-on-Thames. W. J. C. Miller. 
VITA NUOVA. 
(The First Buttercup.)* 
This is Earth’s token of a life renewed — 
While yet the grim frost binds her, and the snow 
Lingers within her shadow, she would show 
Her stillness was but Death’s similitude. 
Swiftly her fairy-prince drew nigh and wooed 
With sunny kisses, waking her, and lo 
Here, on her breast, she placed his colour, so 
To gladden him, whose love her love pursued. 
O little flower, apparelled like the day. 
Thou bringest visions of the golden fields 
Of summer, breathing perfume ; song and mirth 
Of children tumbled in the fl3fing ha)' ; 
All flowers; all fruits; all gladness Nature yields. 
And sends us by the love-awakened Earth ! 
Richard F. Towndrow. 
Rooks and Crows (p. 50). — I wonder whether those interested in the 
building of rooks in Kensington Gardens noticed if they were interfered with by 
crows in 1894 ? They built successfully in 1893, and the birds were seen about 
the nests in 1894. Now, in a group of elm trees which I can watch from my 
windows, some rooks built and laid eggs, and were then attacked by other birds, 
which I thought at the time to be other rooks, but now believe to be crows. 
They fought on the nests, and the parent rooks were driven off and eventually 
forsook them. I mentioned this to some friends living in Essex, and they said 
that the rooks in two rookeries near to them were driven away by crows about 
three years ago. Some carrion was put out to tempt the crows, and by this 
means five or six pairs were shot. The rooks returned to one of the rookeries 
the following year, but the other is, I think, still deserted. 
Chichester. Frances C. C. Kennard. 
* I was surprised to see a plant of the creeping crowfoot {Ranuncttius repens) 
in flower on February 26, before the frost was out of the soil, and while patches 
of snow were still unmelted. 
