212 
NATURE NOTES. 
tion should be considered fully equipped without a supply of fine 
silk bags in which to catch these plants. 
The bulk of this floating microscopic flora far outweighs, 
strange as this may seem, the coastal flora of the world. Mr. 
Murray says : “A recent estimate of the bulk of this flora com- 
pares the inconspicuous marine organisms of the Sargasso Sea 
with the bulk of the floating banks of gulf-weed that give this 
great tract of ocean its name, with the result that the micro- 
scopic forms enormously exceed the gulf- weed in aggregate mass. 
The result is all the more striking since it is known that the 
Sargasso Sea is poor in these minute forms compared with many 
other regions of the ocean.” The whole subject of microscopic 
floating algae has, however, only been studied for a comparatively 
short time, and the investigation of them in their living state is 
much to be desired. 
In his arrangement of the red seaweeds, IMr. Murray has 
adopted the new classification of Professor Schmitz. It still 
remains to be seen whether this will prove as convenient as the 
older system. The book ends with an account of the blue-green 
seaweeds, a difficult, and to amateurs an uninteresting, group. 
It is to be hoped that the publication of Mr. Murray’s book 
will tend to encourage the study of this interesting branch of 
botany, which should specially appeal to such a sea-loving nation 
as ourselves. 
E. S. B.vrton. 
’WINTER VISITANTS. 
UTUMN is again with us, and with autumn a change 
almost as great as in spring is wrought in such birds 
as are prepared, with the regular visitants, to spend 
the winter with us. Sparrows, though not in numbers 
such as I may expect a month hence, have returned from the 
corn fields and hedges in great numbers, and, with the pigeons, 
are ever asking for food. They take it greedily, but as it were 
stealthily and thanklessly, ever on the watch for some hidden 
attack ; even whilst feeding most greedily, now and again they 
start up in a body seeking the shelter of the ivy-covered labur- 
num close at hand, from which, the causeless panic abated, they 
speedily return and proceed with their meal, again and again to 
be interrupted in the same causeless manner. As they rise they 
leave on the ground two or three chaffinches, who, conscious of 
their own rectitude, and fearing no evil, remain. “ The wicked 
flee when no man pursueth.” 
Whether in gratitude for my day dole, or reminded of their 
duties by an old broom I stuck at the top of a beech, two pairs 
of rooks bred in the garden last spring. One nest came to 
grief, but the other supplied three or four young ones, which. 
