70 
NATURE NOTES 
On July 28 I saw a heron flying over Kensington Gardens : 
a chaffinch was singing in the middle of Hyde Park on August 6. 
On the 23rd I put up another common sandpiper close to the 
Serpentine bridge from exactly the same spot as the bird noticed 
in April. This is the only occasion upon which I have seen 
this bird in a London Park in autumn, though it is observed 
fairly regularly on the spring migration. 
On August 27 a large number of sandmartins were flying 
over the Long Water. 
Twice during October I heard a brown owl flying down this 
street in the evening at about ii p.m. 
Thrushes were very quiet in Kensington Gardens during 
the autumn. I heard one trying to sing on Campden Hill on 
November 13 ; but there was no general chorus of thrushes 
until December 3, since which date they have been singing 
regularly. 
On December 14 I saw a kingfisher near the fountains in 
Kensington Gardens, and six days later I found probably the 
same bird floating dead on the water to the east of the bridge. 
The thermometer was standing at about 25° Fahr., and most 
of the surface of the Serpentine was frozen. The bird w'as very 
thin and had probably died of starvation : it had not been dead 
very long. I managed to obtain it by the aid of an umbrella 
without wading very far into the water. 
A. Holte Macpherson. 
51, Gloucester Terrace, 
Hyde Park, W., January y, 1902. 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
Birds' Nests : an Introduction to the Science of Caliolo^y. By Charles Dixon. 
With illustialions by A. T. Elwes. Grant Richards. Price 6s. net. 
How many of our readers can honestly say that they had any notion what 
“ caliology ” meant before reading this title ? That it is, if not a very distinct 
science, a very suggestive department of ornithology, more especially appertaining 
to avian psychology, Mr. Dixon clearly shows. We were surprised to learn from 
him how limited is the literature of his subject, James Rennie’s “ Aichitecture of 
Birds,” the Rev. J. G. Wood’s “ Homes without Hands,” and Dr. Alfred Russel 
Wallace’s classical essay on the “Theory of Birds’ Nests,” practically exhausting 
the list. Any one who is .acquainted with either of these will be glad to have a 
systematic treatment of a subject so intelligible to the most unscientilic of “ general 
readers” from the pen of such an acknowledged authority as Mr. Dixon. Be- 
ginning with nestless birds, including “ parasites,” such as the cuckoo, the author 
passes to the crudest nest-forms and then deals in succession with concealed or 
covered, open, domed and roofed and pendulous nests, ending in truly Darwinian 
fashion, with a rhumi of his entire argument. The whole forms a fascinating 
chapter in the discussion of so-called “instincts.” 
Bird Hunting on the White Nile : a A’^atura/isl’s Exfericnccs in the Soudan. 
By Harry F. Witherby. “ Knowledge ” Office. I’rice 2 s. 6d. 
It is a good many years since we read the late Dr. Leith Adams’s “Natural- 
ist’s Journal in Malta and the Nile Valley,’’ which was the account, so far as 
