NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
97 
The Rev. A. F. Curtis asks if anyone has ever heard the name Frank Heron. 
\Ve have a heronry within a mile or two of Peterborough and the birds are there- 
fore fairly common here, and when I was a boy I frequently heard my grandfather 
speak of the herons as Franks or Frank Herons. I cannot say I have heard the 
term used in late years. I understood fhe name was a popular or folk lore name, 
and had its origin in the note of the bird. 
Broadway, Peterborouf^h, W. H. Bernard Saunders. 
April 1901. 
General Lee and the Sparrow. -A good man’s true sense of character 
and love of nature is often revealed by a noble yet simple action. A story is told 
in an illustraterl article in The New Penny Magazine for March 2, of General 
Robert Lee, who was Commander-in-chief of the Confederate Army in the 
American Civil War, The toils were closing in upon Richmond, and not even 
Lee’s courage and skill could finally keep the foe at bay. When disaster looms 
large on the horizon, a spirit of bitterness and self-seeking is apt to invade men's 
hearts. But General Lee’s nature, instead of deteriorating, revealed itself more 
brightly. One day he was inspecting a battery on the lines below the city, ami 
the soldiers, whose favourite he always was, gathered into a group to welcome 
him. The action drew upon them the hot fire of the Union guns. The general 
noticed it, and he faced about and advised the men to go under shelter. But he 
ilid not do this himself. He walked coolly onwards, at the risk of his life, and 
picked up and replaced an unfledged sparrow which had fallen from its nest in a 
tree clo.se by the battery. 'I his lit le action of compassionate pity on the part of 
General Lee reveals to many that even the sohlier in the time of war is not so 
heartless as people are apt to think him to be. 
2, Canonbury Place, N. CuAS. E. J. Hannett. 
'Vipers and their young. I have nothing original to offer on this question 
in reply to Mr. Westell's suggestion ; but the following editorial remarks in the 
Field of March 30 will .show that there are still people who are sceptical on this 
point ; and that there is an honest penny to be turned by satisfying their own 
test. “ Like Brusher Mills, of New Forest notoriety, Colonel L.’s informant has 
no doubt in his own mind that he has seen a viper swallowing its young ; but, also 
like Brusher Mills, he has never been able to .secure a specimen that had done so, 
tie a piece of string tightly round the throat, and forward the specimen to us for 
examination, and secure the reward that has been so long offered in vain for a 
specimen proving the alleged facts.” 
F. M. Mih.ard. 
Cockneys and Toads. — The members of the choir of a London celebrity, 
lately deceased, were once asked to spend a day at a friend’s house in the country. 
On the lawn a number of seats had been provided for them round a large bed of 
evergreens. The ladies of the house, who had left their guests for a short time to 
see after the arrangements for tea, found on their return that the I.ondoners had 
reversed their seats, and were gazing with scared looks into the bushes. On being 
asked the reason they said they had just seen a toad, and thought they had better 
face him. 
Market IVeston, 'Fhetford, Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
March, 1901. 
The Toad in a Hole. — Like the large gooseberry, the toad in a hole is too 
often with us. I do not know the place of origin of the following cutting, but it 
was cut from the Ulverslon Advertiser of March 14 : “ The Rev. W Buckland, 
from experiments on toads in holes of oolitic limestone and sandstone covered 
with glass, finds that while limestone preserved them alive, sandstone killed 
them. His conclusion is that unless a toad imprisoned in a stone gets a little 
air it cannot live a year, and unless it gels food it cannot live two years.” Un- 
fortunately the.se fictions will be no fewer if it is absolutely proved that the creatures 
could not pos.sibly have existed during the formation of the rocks, let alone the 
<luestion ol heat and pressure involved in the making of “a piece of coal” (see 
p. 77). There may be, as the Editor puts it, “ no wilful imposture” ; but, things 
being as they are, it is on the face of it (to use a mild term) unlikely. 
Ulverslon. S. L. Petty. 
