2 i8 
NATURE NOTES. 
reflection ! Occasionally it would perch on the top and look behind and round 
the edges of the glass ; it was encouraged by hearing another robin in a tree 
outside the window answering to it, and I think this added to the deception of 
the shadow bird being a reality. It was so absorbed that it allowed several of us 
at a time to go into the room to watch it, and hardly moved away when I placed 
a few crumbs on the table for its dinner ; it ate a little, but did not attempt, as I 
had hoped, to feed its little friend in the glass. I noticed that when the bird in 
the tree stopped singing, the note of the bird inside would become more plaintive, 
but directly one of us began to whistle like the robin, its song would again be full 
and joyous, as if doing all in its power to gain the attention and sympathy of its 
supposed little companion. 
Clifton. M. T. Sturge. 
[We hope the sympathetic songster was not challenging his shadow to 
combat !— Ed. W.W.] ^ 
Toad and Snake (p. 197). — Mr. Milligan, writing of an incident which he 
witnessed, and for which he secured a dramatic ending, states that two questions 
arose which he cannot answer. May I suggest a theory to which he may find a 
reply, and favour us with it, in all seriousness. Why did he kill the snake ? 
It was a harmless grass snake, a most beautiful creature ; he was in search of 
a dinner in that fashion which has been allocated to him. Why should he have 
sentence of death carried out upon him in the exercise of his functions? He 
would have swallowed the toad right enough if he had been left alone (by the 
way it was more probably a frog than a toad) ; the toad had quite recently 
been swallowing a live slug, and it is doubtful if Mr. Milligan would have killed 
the toad to free the slug, had he disturbed the toad at dinner instead of the snake. 
This is a question which Selbornains must carefully answer for themselves — 
have we any right to interfere with the rights of animals in such fashion ? I 
think not. We kill animals for our own food, why should we interfere with them 
in the same function? To kill animals in self-defence, such as the tiger, who 
may wish to prey upon us, is a matter of the struggle for existence, in which 
the question will, of course, be answered by the survival of the fittest ; but to kill 
a harmless snake who had just sat down to dinner, and because of that, does not 
seem to me right. 
Birmingham. Lawsom Tait. 
[The question propounded by Dr. Lawson Tait, in his second paragraph 
deserves serious consideration ; we entirely endorse the view he expresses. — 
Ed. W.W.] 
Is it possible that the yellow creature mentioned by Mr. Milligan was a frog 
and not a toad ? Its “ hurried leaps ” look like it. And, if this is the case, the 
“squealing” corroborates my experience as to the vocal powers of yellow frogs. 
On the two or three occasions when I have heard a frog crying out like a young 
puppy (one was being attacked by a dog and one by a cat, when its appealing 
altitude was very curious) I invariably found the frog brilliantly yellow. There 
can, I suppose, be no doubt that these yellow specimens of Kana temporaria are 
not to be recognised as a variety ; and yet there seems some unexplained corre- 
lation between colour and voice. Some of your correspondents may have heard 
an olive-coloured frog yelping ; I never h.ave. 
Kew. E. Hubbard. 
[Another correspondent makes a similar suggestion. — E d. A^.A^.]. 
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