NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
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299 . It would be an excellent thing if the paper of “ East Sussex ” on “ Birds 
in the Field and Garden ” were separately printed for distribution amongst 
farmers, gamekeepers, and others. Being a resident in that part of the county, 
I feel sure that what he writes may do much good, and combat the persistent 
notion that birds of every, or almost every, kind are to be exterminated as mis- 
chievous and nothing else. 
In this neighbourhood rats and mice are a perfect plague, and in the spring- 
time they do far more harm in my garden than any amount of birds, without the 
compensating advantage of destroying insects, grubs, and worms at all periods 
of the year. My Irish terrier does his best to keep them down, and accounts on 
an average for about two mice a day and two rats a week, but that goes only a 
little way. The other evening I met a farmer endeavouring to shoot the rats, 
which he spoke of as a constant and serious trouble. When I said, “ I wish 
people would leave the owls alone, for they are the best rat- and mice-catchers,” 
he replied, “ So I’ve heard say.” But as for an owl or a kestrel, neither of them 
is ever to be seen, although the under-keeper of the principal game-preserver 
of these parts once assured me that orders were given not to shoot the owl.=. 
lie added that, personally, he had never known an owl interfere with young 
pheasants. 
It is long since I saw a kestrel. It was in Herefordshire. The bird was 
dying by inches, as it hung by the leg from one of those detestable pole-traps 
which happily are now illegal. I do not think I am “ sentimental,” but the 
expression of that bird’s eyes has haunted me ever since. He was a " hawk,” 
however, and that was enough to sign his death-warrant, poor thing ! 
Buxted, Sussex, A. L. H. 
October"], 1905. 
300. Belated House Martina. — Numbers of these birds prolong their 
stay here till winter cuts off the supply of insect food and they die of cold and 
starvation. A neighbour once showed me the contents of the martins’ nests 
round his house at Christmas time, which consisted of fifty or sixty full-fledged 
young birds that had retired to die in the homes where they were born. It is 
interesting to try and trace the causes of their remaining here when the rest are 
gone. In most cases the belated birds are believed to be the second brood which 
the old ones deserted when the lime for the autumn migration had arrived. 
Though old enough to seek for food, they were too young to take warning from 
their elders, and not sufficiently educated to see the danger of remaining here. 
The young of many British birds migrate by themselves, without a guide, a few 
weeks after they have left the nest, and arrive in some distant land where their 
parents join them a couple of months later. It would appear that previous to 
setting out on their first journey they are fully instructed by the old ones in what 
they have to do, and where they are to go. If, however, they are deserted by 
their parents before this knowledge is acquired they are unable to find their way 
across the seas to other lands, and generally die without attempting to leave their 
native land at all. 
October, 1905. Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
301. Clouded Yellow Butterflies. — In the Country Side of Sep- 
tember 9, it is said that the occurrence of the Clouded Yellow (Colias edusa) 
“ is the direct or indirect result of immigration from abroad. At any rate it 
must be very rarely indeed that its sensitive caterpillar can live through an 
English winter ; nor is there any evidence to support those writers who maintain 
that the butterfly itself hybernates in Britain. \Ve may, in fact, feel assured that 
but for the wind we should never see the Clouded Yellow in England at all.” 
In regard to these statements I cannot help thinking them entirely mistaken. 
They are quite contrary to my knowledge and experience. For nineteen years 
I lived close to Portsdown Hill, where Clouded Yellow butterflies could be taken 
year after year in abundance in the autumn, and where I have often seen 
