NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
77 
died of some injury, as it was in a very poor condition and had been dead several 
days, as the feathers on the belly came away on being touched, showing that 
decomposition had begun. 
Si. Albans, Herts. \V. Pekcivai. Westei.i., M.B.O.U. 
March, 1902. 
Rook with Malformed Mandible.— While watching some rooks that 
were feeding on the playground of a local school, I noticed that one of the birds 
had a difficulty in picking up its food. It turned the head sideways to seize a 
crust, which it lifted after some difficulty. On watching the bird more closely, 
I saw that the upper mandible projected at least an inch over the lower one. 
The unfoitunate bird was thus impeded greatly in its endeavour to obtain food. 
Though I had heard of such an abnormal growth, this was the first instance that I 
had come across. 
Heme Hilt. H. E. Cocksedge. 
Hibernating Butterflies.— If E. M. Beechey’s butterfly be not released 
until April, and in the meanwhile should not be fed, it would, I fear, die of 
starvation. Hibernating insects do not, of course, require food during the winter 
season, but during March, if the weather be mild, the hibernating butterflies are 
on the wing. I have kept in confinement a large number of butterflies — princi- 
pally some of the Vanessas — and found they will feed freely upon honey. V. ala- 
tanla, by the way, is exceedingly partial to ripe fruit. My plan is to place a few 
drops of this bever.age in the centre of a small roundish shell, so that the little 
creatures can feed without danger of the honey sticking to their legs. Some of 
the Rhopalocera have more common sense than they are usually credited with. 
I have known an Apatura iris once watch its food being placed in the larva- 
cage, and immediately it had been located, fly down from the side of the cage and 
commence sipping the sweet repast. One year I had some of these grand insects 
so tame that they would allow me to take them in my fingers. 
A. M. P. 
[In writing “April” I had in view the prolongation of recent winters. It 
was obviously meant that hibernating insects do not require food, but that the 
butterfly in question should be released as soon as the weather becomes suitable. 
—Ed. N.N.\ 
Bees (p. 18). — Mr. E. T. Daubeny is quite right in stating that the bees kill 
the drones. I have never either said or written in any book or journal in my life 
that they do not. In his first note he distinctly stated that they kill them by 
“stinging ; ” this is the point (no pun intended) upon which I must emphatically 
differ from him. He asks me to quote an authority. Well, perhaps I may not be, 
in his opinion, an authority : anyway, not to be egotistical, I am recognised by 
bee-keepers as such. I may inform him that for the last quarter of a century I 
have handled bees by millions : in fact, during the bee season, I am from morn to- 
night doing little else : this is my practical work. I have also been engaged for 
as long a period studying them for scientific purposes, as well as lecturing on their 
cultivation and habits in all parts of the British Isles, and writing upon the same 
subject in English, American, and Continental journals. Mr. Rawlins, who also 
differs from Mr. E. T. Daubeny, is a bee-keeper, to my personal knowledge, of 
some eighteen years’ standing, and is a man who does not keep bees with his eyes 
shut — in fact, I should judge him to be a close observer of all the minutise of bee- 
life. Does jSIr. Daubeny require any further authority than that ? If so, I should 
be pleased to furnish him with more, both English and foreign. 
Now to support my statement ; if Mr. Daubeny will take a few drones and 
place them in a box without food, leaving them in the cool for six hours, he will 
find them all in the condition I stated — scarcely able to move, and, according to 
temperature, many of them dead. Why should Mr. Daubeny suppose that drones 
do not require food in the middle of the night ? They do not belong to the genus 
Homo. I may tell him that they feed or are fed at ail times, night and day, 
e.xactly as the bees themselves work at all times, night and day. Simply because 
bees and drones do not fly from the hive at night, it does not follow that they 
sleep or cease feeding during those times. I think Mr. Daubeny should get an 
observatory hive and study these matters : he will, by so doing, obtain a vast 
amount of pleasure, and also a practical knowledge of the subject. 
