NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
117 
to have. It is therefore of great importance to preserve this natural wildness, 
and it is thought that the views of a Society formed of residents and others having 
an intimate knowledge of all the characteristics of the old Heath, would be of 
great value, and would be welcomed by the Council. The subscription is 2s. 6d. 
per annum, which may be paid to the Hon. .Secretarie.s, Mr. C. N. Dalton, C.B., 
and Miss Emily Field, at .Squires Mount, Hampstead. 
Encouraging Birds. — “ Robin ” (p. 76) asks for information as to the 
best means to encourage birds to nest in the garden. Probably few readers have 
h.ad so much experience in inducing birds to stay and occupy homes or boxes as 
myself. The following is a list I have had cither occupying houses for building 
purposes or as shelters in winter: — The barn-owls, kestrels, stock-doves, 
starlings, wood-pecker.s, house-sparrows, tree-sparrows, robins, wrens, great-tits, 
marsh-tits, blue-tits, redstarts and flycatchers ; and with a little attention others 
have been helped to provide homes outside, the wood-pigeons, willow-wrens, 
hedge-sparrows, martins and swallows : while many others find suitable quarters 
without help. It is hardly likely “ Robin ” will succeed in securing this list 
within four-and-a-half miles of Charing Cross, but in the suburbs of London 
much might be done to secure some birds, in tinding .suitable nesting-places if the 
habits of birds are understood. 
J.VMF.S IIlAM. 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
A Mole’s Larder (p. 63). — Mr. Daubeny will find in Jenyns’ Observa- 
tions in Natural History reference made to the supposed habit of the mole of 
storing up food for future use. The author, indeed, mentions a case of a large 
quantity of worms (the majority of which had been mutilated in some way) 
having been found by his nephew in a hole in the ground in the month of 
November, but of course was unable to say that they had actually been deposited 
by the mole, though appearances were very much in favour of such a supposition. 
Nlr. Jesse, too, in his Gleanings in Natural History, stales on the authority of 
a mole-catcher, that previous to the setting-in of winter the mole stores away a 
quantity of worms in a sort of basin or hollow in the ground previously prepared 
for the purpose. To this store the mole repairs during the winter months. 
Fyfield, Abingdon. W. H. \Yarner. 
I have kept several moles in confinement on various occasions for the 
purpose of studying their habits, but I never found a disposition to lay up 
stores in the way mentioned. They seize and kill worms at the head part, 
and gradually draw them through the jaws, chewing up the writhing w'orm to 
the end. Moles in confinement will kill and devour a fresh one put into their 
box or pen. They fight like bull-dogs with fore-feet and mouth ; the stronger one 
eats its way in the side of its victim, devouring all the inside, flesh, and bones up 
to the toe-nails, which they reject. The only way to definitely clear up the point 
raised by Mr. Daubeny would be to open up runs of moles at various seasons 
of the year. 
J. Hiam. 
A gentleman living some five miles from here writes to say: — “I saw an 
old mole-catcher on Thursday, and he told me that before winter moles often 
stored worms and always bit their heads off. Still,” he says, “worms will 
not keep long ; I have tried experiments with them, and worms scon decom- 
pose — very rapidly — so he did not think that the store could be meant to last 
for any length of time.” 
Thetford. Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
Curious Nesting-Place of Robins.— In the recreation-ground of the 
junior students in this college, a pair of robins have this year chosen a very 
singular nesting-place. The main walk of the junior house runs parallel to the 
boundary wall. Between the outer edge of this walk and the wall is a belt of 
greensward about seven yards wide without shrub or weedy growth of any kind 
