56 
NATURE NOTES 
of his wings, and without tremor of the air, he drops upon his prey. There is 
hardly a struggle or a cry, his long sharp talons — and no bird of his size has such 
long and sharp talons — have met in the vitals of his victim, and he flies back 
with it grasped tightly in them to his coign of vantage.” 
There are grounds, then, for saying that the breast of the barn or white owl 
is not in itself luminous, and that luminosity is not a factor in its search for food. 
Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
602. Luminosity in Owls. — I have not seen the discussion on this 
matter in any of the daily papers, but have no doubt that a vast amount of 
nonsense has been written, as is usually the case. The editor of The Country- 
Side suggests that either (i) the owl was not luminous at all, but, being a barn owl 
and therefore very white, the irradiation natural to white objects in a dim light 
gave the impression of a distinct luminosity, aided perhaps by some unusual 
condition of the atmosphere ; or (2) that some of the refuse fish or flesh in its 
nest had become phosphorescent — a not unusual phenomenon in stale fish — and 
adhered to the bird’s feathers. This latter idea is supported by “ A Country 
Teacher’s” notes (p. 34), where he says the “ luminosity ” appeared to come from 
the bird’s underparts. The writer of the ornithological notes in Knowledge 
suggests that the oil gland may have become diseased and the resulting secretion 
rendered phosphorescent thereby. The notes on p. 33 by the fisherman and 
in “ the curious book” seem to refer to St. Elmo’s fire, a not uncommon electrical 
phenomenon, which seems to have no connection with the question. 
C. Nicholson, B.E.N.A. 
[Another suggestion (in the Febiuary issue of British Birds') is that a feather- 
fungus is answerable for the luminosity. As, however, one of the “ luminous ” 
owls is slated to have died and to have been sent to the Natural History 
Museum, we shall soon, doubtless, have the mystery set at rest. — Ed. N.N.] 
603 . The Parental Instinct. — The incident of the bullfinches and that 
of the duckling are easiiy explicable if it be borne in mind that “ instinct ” is 
merely the “■ inherited experience” of the species in question. There is very 
little “intelligent accommodation” exercised in nature, I think, but a very 
ligorous selection, resulting in the “ survival of the fittest ” and “the weakest 
{i.e., unfit) going to the wall.” The animal which does not obey the involuntary 
promptings of the inherited experience of untold generations will suffer exter- 
mination in all probability, and its descendants, if any, will suffer likewise, if they 
inherit its disobedience. C. Nicholson. 
604 . The Bittern. — Country Life of February i says: “Few English 
birds are of more interest than the bittern, whose booming used to be one of the 
most regular and melancholy sounds in the neighbourhood of marsh and mire. 
It is therefore pleasant to hear that the bird is not extinct, as was at one time 
supposed. Mr. Wm. H. Davison writes that when shooting at Henley Park, in 
Surrey, midway between Guildford and Aldershot, he saw one fly slowly over 
the keeper and himself. ‘ Shot,’ of course, is the usual end of such an incident ; 
but in this case it happened to be a bird-lover who saw the bittern, and it was 
allowed to go unscathed. .Since this has been the case, we hope that every 
gunner, if he happens to come across it, will be equally mindful of the rarity 
of the bird and repress any desire to shoot it. Early in last century, as we can 
see from references in various poems and folk-lore, the bittern was a common 
bird under the name of butter-bump. Everybody knows the reference to it in 
Tennyson’s ‘ Northern Farmer,’ and there is an ancient adage in the North which 
tuns: ‘When the butter-bumps cryq summer is nigh.’ In Yorkshire it used to 
frequent the Cans, hut deserted them about 1750. How common they were is 
proved by the fact that in weather-lore it was accepted as a certain indication of 
rain, or something worse, when their melancholy voice was heard above Potteric 
Carr.” 
“Bittern Caught in Yorkshire.— A fine specimen of the bittern, now 
very rare in England, has been caught at Bishop Monckton by a youth named 
Charles Underwood. The bird attacked the boy on his approach with great 
ferocity. With assistance it was knocked down and secured.” — The Lancashire 
Daily Post, January 27, 1908. 
