137 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Cream Squirrel. — While walking by the Shadwell Forest on the Hurling 
Road, in the month of June, my attention was attracted to a big oak tree where 
a “cream squirrel” and three brown ones were feeding on oak apples: when I 
moved they dropped their oak apples and scampered off. 
Thetford. W. SPARROW. 
A Time-limit for the Origin of a Raoe. — The Journal of the Linneau 
Society: Zoology , vol. xxvi., contains a most interesting account by Mr. H. L. 
Jameson, of a race of house mice, rufous grey above and pale buff beneath, 
inhabiting the sand-hills of the North Bull, which first appeared above water 
about a century ago. Gradations occur between this race and the normal 
black-grey mouse, and the former is protected from owls and hawks by its 
resemblance in colour to the dry grasses on the sand-hills. 
Ring-doves — A lady will be glad to give a pair of young ring-doves to any 
one who .vill give them a comfortable home — not a small cage. Address E. S. N., 
4, Eldon Road, Hampstead, N.W. 
A Gun instead of a Field-Glass. — Some time since I observed what 
seemed to me a very singular circumstance in the kestrel hawk ( Falco tinnunculus). 
One evening I was passing an old ruined barn with my gun, when from a hole 
in the cob wall I saw one of these birds fly out. Not being for the moment 
quite prepared, I fired at long range and missed. Returning to the spot about 
half an hour afterwards I saw, I believe, the same bird making her exit from the 
same hole, but in a very peculiar hobbling manner. The bird flew upward, but 
this time with less success, for I dropped her and picked up a broken egg which 
she was carrying away in her claws, possibly to some safer retreat. 
75, High Street, Barnstaple. Jas. Partridge. 
Birds and Bicycles. — Are our British birds beginning, like the British 
public, to appreciate the bicycle ? I am inclined to think they are. Certainly 
one catches many more glimpses of bird life when on the wheel than the un- 
initiated would expect. It seems as if both birds and wild animals have not the 
same fear of a cyclist that they have of an ordinary walking human being. The 
cyclist’s approach is practically noiseless, and his image upon their retime purely 
momentary, besides which he never carries a gun nor a catapult, and is unaccom- 
panied by a dog. It is by no means impossible, therefore, that these creatures 
should associate him with their less dangerous enemies. It is pretty generally 
accepted that rooks know when a man is carrying a gun, and it seems by no 
means impossible that birds should associate the peculiar mode of progression of 
the cyclist with safety. Be this as it may, they let you get much nearer them 
when you are cycling than when you are walking. The other evening we 
passed within a yard or so of a pair of partridges, who were squatting on the 
grass by the roadside, without disturbing them. True, they had the “ corner of 
their eyes” upon us, but they never stirred. Then again, chaffinches when they 
are feeding on the road fly up and alight on the nearest branch without troubling 
to go any considerable distance, as they do when one is walking. One is apt, 
however, to get somewhat different ideas as to the relative frequency of birds in 
a district, from the saddle of a cycle than one would from walking. For instance, 
the other evening we had a run of some fifteen miles in haste to avoid a threat- 
ened storm, through country lanes with high thorn hedges, interspersed with 
a fair number of trees and thickets. The evening was chilly, but the nightin- 
gales were in full song, and we seemed hardly to have got beyond the range of 
the song of one before we came into that of another. The natural impression one 
would arrive at was that the country was full of nightingales ; possibly this 
impression may not be so far wrong, for there seem to be more nightingales this 
year than there are swallows ! But it must be remembered that people do not 
walk fifteen miles in an evening as a rule, certainly they do not cover the distance 
