NATURE NOTES. 
136 
While patrolling the streets afterwards we found in a shop two 
curlew sandpipers, imprisoned in a basket covered with netting. 
Beautiful little birds they were, fighting desperately for their 
liberty. They had been caught in a net the night before, and 
their captors were proposing to sell them as slug destroyers, to 
be pinioned and put in a garden. They seemed quite uninjured, 
so we bought them for the magnificent sum of two francs, and 
taking them to the shore set them free. Poor little birds ! they 
instantly rushed to the riverside and drank thirstily great gulps 
of the cool water. One soon flew away and joined a flock of 
birds on the sands in Brittany, but the other seemed weaker, 
and a fisherman, who had not seen us free them, ran after and 
caught it by the wing ; we again bought it off, and he promised 
to leave it, assuring us that it would soon get strong and fly 
away, which greatly relieved our minds. He said that they 
often caught such birds in nets, and that it would have been 
“tres bon a manger,” a fact which we did not attempt to 
dispute. 
I saw no other birds of interest during our stay of three days, 
and only a couple of jays and a green woodpecker on our return 
drive to Pontorson, but even what I did see convinced me that 
Mont St. Michel is well worth a visit by the naturalist as well 
as the archaeologist or artist. Of course it is not safe to walk 
on the sands alone — even the most experienced guides have 
been overtaken by disaster in the past, when guiding parties of 
tourists across the treacherous Greves ; but from the Mount 
itself a great deal may be seen by the traveller who has a good 
field glass in his hand, and in his heart a genuine love of the 
“ dear old nurse,” Nature. 
M. L. A. 
SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS. 
The Young Beetle-Collector's Handbook, by Dr. E. Hofmann, with an Intro- 
duction by W. Egmont Kirby, M. D. ; illustrated by 20 coloured plates, com- 
prising over 500 figures, 178 pp. Price 4s. 6d. (London ; Swan Sonnenschein 
& Co.) This little volume is well bound and well printed, of a convenient size, 
and may be safely recommended to the notice of those young collectors who are 
in want of a book that is not burdened with a great many hints on collecting, 
and who are likely to be satisfied with the means of ascertaining the .scientific 
names of some of the larger and more showy species in their collections. Dr. 
Kirby has succeeded in telling them in a single page or so of the introduction 
all he considers it needful to know about “ the habits of beetles and how to catch 
them,” while in an etjual amount of space he teaches them how to kill beetles. 
The book contains over 500 figures of Coleoptera, including both Hritish and 
non-British species. Many of the larger figures are sufficiently true to nature to 
enable the young collector — while making due allowance for the artist’s ignorance 
of the anatomical structure of a beetle —to identify the species without referring 
to the text except for the purpose of finding the name corresponding to each 
particular figure. Interesting bits of information are given in the text under the 
names of species, genera and families, although apparently not intended to assist 
materially the collector in nandng and cl.assifying his captures. Under Carahidee, 
for example, he will learn that “This is a large family, the members of which 
