NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 31 
are also articles on Kol)ert Buchanan, Shelley, the rights of animals, flogging, &c., 
besides reviews and correspondence. 
Some Notes on the Flora of Hampstead. By James E. Whiting. Reprinted from 
the Hampstead Annual for 1901. 
This is an agreeably wtiiten paper, enumerating under their English names the 
chief flowering plants of the district. As Hampstead happens to be the district 
to which the very earliest English florula refers, we hope that the author will give 
us another year the history of the losses of this suburban home of wild plants. 
Journal of the Kew Guild. 1901. No. ix. Messrs. Taylor and Francis. 
Glad as we are to .see so good a number of this private journal, it has a 
decidedly melancholy interest. The capital portrait ol Mr. George Nicholson 
that forms the frontispiece reminds us that ill-health has removed his genial 
presence from Kew, whilst those of our old friettd Mr. Thomas Meehan of 
Philadelphia, and of George Bean, who at thirty fell a victim to dysentery in 
South Alrica, tell of other gaps in the world of horticulture. 
Received : — Science Gossip, The Naturalist, The Irish Naturalist, The 
Naturalist' s Journal, The Animals’ Friend, Our Animal Friends, The .Animal 
World, and Humanity for January. 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Avalanches. — After I had written what appears at pages 212 and 213 in 
Nature Notes for November, I read in one ol the local papers here a similar 
remark about the trees above the large avalanche not being damaged. When 
visiting the place I was unable to go and find out the reason of this, for I had a 
lady with me who was unequal to the climb which that would involve. How- 
ever, yesterday I paid another visit to the vallee de la Tiniere, and found, as I 
expected, after looking in the map, that in front of the trees the bed of the stream 
over which the avalanche lay took a sharp turn to the left in a deep, narrow gorge, 
like a V. On questioning some woodcutters, I was informed that this avalanche 
descends most years, and this year was exceptionally large. Where a cutting was 
made near the lower end to get the roadway clear, the thickness of snow was 4 
metres, — over 12 feet, and in the narrow V-shaped gorge I estimate it must have 
been 50 or 60 feet deep. The snow took this year several months to entirely melt, 
the sun’s rays being kept oft by the nature of the ground and surrounding pine 
forest. The avalanche is formed by the wind driving the snow over the high 
mountain ridge behind. A wall is now being built at an altitude of 6,cxx) feet to 
try and stop this. Truly the Swiss are an industrious and persevering people ; 
their rugged country is well calculated to develop the powers of their engineers, 
and the nature of their corkscrew railway-tunnels can be guessed at by looking at 
the maps in Baedecker’s Handbook. 
Montreux, November 12, 1901. Giles A. Daubeny. 
Notes from Brittany. — I have twice seen in the garden here, on a stone 
terrace, a lizard carrying an egg in its mouth. Can you tell me whether it does 
this in order to find a suitable place to leave it in to hatch ? On another occasion 
the gardener found a collection of six lizard’s eggs in the earth where he was 
digging up potatoes. 
On the 7th inst. I distinctly heard the cuckoo in the early morning, uttering 
its usual call, instead of the double one, “ cuck-cuckoo.” 
During the late muzzling order here, our dog was very much vexed at having 
to wear a muzzle, and one day when I was going to take him for a walk the 
muzzle was nowhere to be found, till after a long search we found he had hidden 
it in a corner he had adopted for the storage of bones and fishes’ he.ids. 
Riviera, St. Servan, Edith de J. du V.\li.o.n. 
Ille-et- Vilaine, France, 
July 9, 1901. 
