154 
NATURE NOTES 
council, which meets quarterly, has naturally a good deal to record ; and, in spite 
of much of that disheartening slowness of apparent progress that chills all our 
work, this volume of 134 pages has in it much of encouragement. By an amusing 
lapsus calami Sir William Richmond becomes (on p. 109) Sir William Redmond ! 
Four Old Irish Songs of Summer and Winter. Edited and translated by Kuno 
Meyer. David Nutt. 
This pamphlet of 27 pages is a remarkable one. Four old Irish songs, 
belonging probably to the end of the ninth or the beginning of the tenth century, 
are printed with an English translation, glossary, notes, and preface by a German 
scholar at Halle, and published in London. The following opening stanzas of the 
translation of the song in praise of May-day are interesting considering their 
antiquity : — 
“ May-day, season surpassing ! 
Splendid is colour then, 
Blackbirds sing a full lay, 
If there be a slender shaft of day. 
“ The dust-coloured cuckoo calls aloud : 
Welcome, splendid summer ! 
The bitter bad weather is past, 
The boughs of the wood are a thicket. 
“ Summer cuts the river down, 
The swilt herd of horses seeks the pool, 
The long hair of the heather is outspread, 
The soft white wild cotton blows.” 
Proceedings of the South London Entomological and Natural History Society , 
1902. With two plates and a chart. Price 2S. 6d. 
Though one or two of the papers deal with foreign natural history, this sub- 
stantial number contains a goodly amount of valuable local matter, notably life- 
histories of Acidalia marginipunctata and Argulus foliaceus. Nine field-meetings 
are also fully reported. 
Report of the Rugby School Natural History Society for 1902. (Thirty-sixth 
issue). 
This now venerable society has not only Botanical, Entomological, Zoological, 
Geological and Meteorological, but Photographic, Architectural, and Physical 
Sections, though their numbers do not appear to be great, considering the size of 
the school. This report contains, besides the usual lists, illustrated papers on the 
Tertiary Rocks of the Hants Basin and Small-power Machinery'. 
Received : University of Colorado Bulletin , vol. ii., No. 4, Quarto-Cen- 
tennial Celebration ; Butterflies and Moths of Europe , by W. F. Kirby, F.L.S., 
parts 26-28 The American Botanist and The Victorian Naturalist for April ; 
The Naturalist, The Irish Naturalist, The Humanitarian, The Animal World, 
The Animals' Friend, Our Animal Friends, and The Agricultural Economist 
for May. 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Sexes of White Stoats. — The curious experience of a North of England 
gamekeeper, mentioned by the Rev. E. T. Daubeny (Nature Notes, May, 
p. 95), accords precisely with what an Ipswich bird-stuffer (a good naturalist and 
very observant man) told me this spring, viz., that all the white or nearly white 
stoats he had stuffed had been females. That the seasonal change of colour in 
this animal should be confined to one sex seemed to me at the time so remarkable 
and unlikely a thing that I supposed it to be entirely due to a singular chance 
that no white males should have passed through his hands. 
It would be interesting to know whether the same thing has been noticed 
elsewhere. 
Blaxhall, Suffolk. G. T. Rope. 
