IRature IRotes : 
Zhe Selbornc Societig’s fIDagasitie 
No. 133. 
JANUARY, 1901. VoL. XII. 
SELBORNIANA. 
Glover’s Island. — It is undoubtedly a subject for congratu- 
lation that Glover’s Island has been purchased and presented 
to the Corporation of Richmond. It will be remembered that 
one of the loveliest views in the world was threatened not long 
ago with ruin, by a proposal to allow a large advertisement 
hoarding to be erected on this little Thames eyot. 
Physical Laboratory. — It is announced that Bushey House, 
Hampton Court, formerly occupied by William IV. and by the 
Due de Nemours, is being converted into a laboratory in con- 
nection with Kew Observatory, to which all the, work of the 
observatory is eventually to be transferred. This will pre- 
sumably remove the chief argument against the electric tram- 
ways projected in the Kew district. We trust it also means the 
abandonment of the scheme for a laboratory in the Old Dedt" 
Park. 
Reprehensible Shop “ Decorations.” — Many protests have 
appeared of late in The Standard, The Daily Graphic, and else- 
where, against the altogether needless sacrifice of squirrels and 
of many kinds of birds, wholly valueless as food, for purposes 
of advertisement or “ decoration ” in poulterers’ shops. One 
correspondent enumerates the great northern diver, crested 
grebe, dabchick, several species of gulls, cormorant, heron, 
kingfisher, green woodpecker, great spotted woodpecker, long- 
eared, tawny and barn owls, kestrel and sparrow hawks, 
butcher-bird, greenfinch, bullfinch, goldfinch, shoveller duck, 
blackbird and song-thrush, as so employed. Whilst, as Canon 
Rawnsley implies in a letter to The Standard, it is desirable to 
strike at the root of this evil, at the thoughtlessness which 
