62 
NATURE NOTES. 
which it is situated, filled, peopled, infested by a beautiful flower, which grew in 
such profusion, and was so difficult to keep under, that (poor pretty thing ?), in- 
stead of being admired and cherished, and watered, and supported, as it well 
deserves to be, and would be if it were rare, it is disregarded, affronted, mal- 
treated, cut down, pulled up, hoed out like a weed. 
I do not know the name of this elegant plant, nor have I met with anyone who 
does. We call it the Spicer, after an old naval officer who once inhabited the 
White House just above, and, according to tradition, first brought the seed from 
foreign parts. It is a sort of large Veronica, with a profusion of white gauzy 
flowers, streaked with red, like the apple blossom. Strangers admire it prodig- 
iously, and so do I — everywhere but in my own garden. 
***** 
I never saw anything prettier than a whole bed of these “ Spicers,” which had 
clothed the top of a large heap of earth by the roadside. . . . The plants are 
thick and close as grass, and covered with delicate red and white blossoms, like 
a fairy orchard.” 
[The plant referred to is undoubtedly the Soap wort, Sapanaria officinalis, 
which, beautiful as it is, too often becomes a serious pest in gardens to which it 
has been introduced.] 
Voracious Voles. — While walking last week in a narrow Hertfordshire 
lane, I was struck with the appearance of two bushes in the hedge at some distance 
from each other, the bark of which had been so generally gnawed off from boughs 
and twigs that the bushes at a little distance looked white. At the foot of the 
bushes — some 8 or ioft. in height — was a small pile of twigs three or four inches 
in length, from which all the bark had been stripped. A third bush, an elder, 
had also been attacked, but only partially. My companion hunted in the bank 
below the hedge and found various small holes and burrows, but nothing that gave 
us a clue to the author of the damage done. 
I afterwards sought information at the National History Museum, and, by the 
kindness of the official in charge of the Insect Department, found that the creature 
must have been the meadow Vole. In spite of many years of country life I have 
not before seen this nibbled bark (specimens of which I enclose) and I shall be 
glad to learn whether this small Vole is now more common than usual ? I met 
one in a Yorkshire meadow last year hopping among the grass, in search I thought, 
of earth worms. E. H. 
The Shooting of Rare Birds. — An interesting, and in some respects, 
amusing correspondence has recently been carried on in the columns of the Western 
Morning Mews under the above title. Our readers will remember that in the Jan- 
uary number of Nature Notes there was quoted a letter from Mr. Thomas 
Cornish, of Penzance, in which he gloried in having destroyed two “ rare birds,” 
a buzzard and a heron. For this he was severely taken to task by our correspondent, 
“ Cornubiensis Indignans but the rebuke he received has had but little effect in 
producing a reformation in his habits, for in the Western Morning News of April 
1st, he writes throwing doubt upon a paragraph inserted in that paper, to the effect 
that the sandmartin and wheatear had been seen near Liskeard, on March 29th, 
which paragraph he says, “is the best possible proof that rare birds should be 
shot.” He then goes on to make the extraordinary remark that “ Had these ob 
served birds been reduced to handling, and so identified, ichthyology]!) would 
have gained a new experience, and the bird-world would have lost two of its 
members. ” 
In a later letter from Mr. Cornish, he takes upon himself the fuller responsi- 
bility for this absurd mistake, and goes on to make the still more astounding state- 
ment, “ Except for size, habitat, and a few other trifling variations, an elephant 
might be a shew {sic) mouse, or the mouse might be a whale, or the whale might be 
a flying-fish, and this latter certainly might be a Northern diver.” But for size, 
habitat, and a few other trifling peculiarities, Mr. Cornish apparently might be a 
stormy-petrel, judging by the tempest of indignation from observers of nature which 
he has aroused in the columns of the IV. M. N. One might suppose that it would 
have been easy to convince him (1) That a bird is not a fish ; (2) That it is very 
probable, instead of “highly Improbable,” that wheatears and sandmartins would 
be found in Cornwall at the end of March ; (3) That wheatears and sandmartins 
are not, properly speaking, “ rare birds” at all ; (4) That the best way to make any 
