54 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 
597. Rats. — It is difficult to say anything fresh about these animals, for 
everybody is quite sure that he knows all about them. However, judging by the 
newspapers, public opinion is being roused to the great injury they do, and the 
nuisance they are almost everywhere. It would be worth while for our County 
Councils to take the matter up, and employ persons skilled in the destruction of 
rats to set to work systematically the country through. Much good might be 
done, not only in killing them, but also in pointing out where they harbour on 
our premises, and how these haunts could be discovered and destroyed. In 
combating the rat, the virtues of the weasel should be kept in sight, a policy I 
have advocated for many years. Many farmers round here preserve the weasel’s 
life. They find he is their friend, and not their foe. Let me give a case. Two 
ricks close to each other in a farmyaid were threshed, one of which was full 
of rats. The other was tenanted by a weasel, not a rat in it, but about thirty 
freshly killed mice, which the weasel had caught for itself and its family. The 
farmer knew the value of the weasel and saved its life, and it will probably reward 
him by saving another rick or two. Sometimes, in passing to leeward of corn 
ricks, I detect the smell of mice at a distance of too yards or more. The amount 
of grain destroyed by mice is very great. Why persecute the weasel, the natural 
enemy of rats and mice alike? Unfortunately, weasels are very like stoats in the 
eyes of the uninitiated, and I am quite unable to defend the stoat’s character. 
South-acre, Sivaff'ham. Edmuni) Thos. DaUBENY. 
February, 1908. 
598. Grolden Oriole. — One of these birds, a male, has been seen about 
here on December 24 and January 7. These birds usually come here in the 
spring and leave in the autumn. As this biid is settled in safe quarters, where 
its lile is respected, I hope it will survive the winter and rear a brood this spring. 
About here our Norfolk squires do what they can to preserve the lives of rare 
birds, and have persuaded their keepers to do the same. It was but a few days 
ago a keeper told me of a “ large hawk,” probably a hen-harrier, which he had 
seen frequently of late, and was determined not to slay. Keepers are looking 
up a bit at last ! Ed.mund Thos. Daubeny. 
599. A Sign of Spring. — The return of the peewit's to their breeding 
grounds is one of the earliest signs in the open fields of the welcome coming of 
spring. Seen (as to-day, February 28) on some stormy day, when the black 
rain-storms come tiding up over the high ground on a bitterly cold north-west 
wind, as at intervals the dark rain-clouds pass by and the sun, now growing 
stronger, streams out in glory with a perceptible and welcome warmth, we enjoy 
and appreciate the appearance of the peewits on the bare bleak hill, their chosen 
breeding ground. The sunshine which lights up the hillside, covered with short 
withered mossy grass (“ whitey-brown,” dashed with green), and makes the 
arable land glow into fox-colour where it has been newly worked, glints with 
dazzling effect on the white plumage of the peewits in erratic flight. Here and 
there we see a bird standing motionless and contemplative ; but they are not 
still for long together, twisting up into the air with joyous cries, toying with 
one another up aloft or making short excursions into neighbouring fields and 
fallows to feed. They do not stay away long ; soon they come restlessly sweeping 
back to their spring home, to shoot along close to the ground and then alight 
as perhaps only a peewit can alight. They touch the ground just as a large 
soap bubble touches it, and almost seem as if they must bound gently forward. 
Thomson is very fine on the peewit's flight, although his lines apply to a rather 
later period : — 
“ Hence, around the head 
Of wandering swain, the white-wing’d plover wheels 
Her sounding flight, and then directly on 
In long excursion skims the level lawn, 
To tempt him from her nest.” 
(77r« Seasons, Spring.) 
So too Tennyson : 
“ And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea.” 
