140 
HONEY-BUZZARD. 
met with, which is stated by the writer to he a positive fact, 
and as in our view of the case it is by no means unlikely to 
have occurred, we give it. A peasant in the mountainous 
part of the South of France, observing a great number of wild 
Ducks settled on the ice of a small river that was frozen over, 
fired into the midst of them, and was surprised to find that 
not one of them took to flight. On going up, he found, that 
owing to the severity of the frost, they were not only com- 
pletely fastened to the ice by their feet, but that nearly one- 
half were frozen to death. The above anecdotes will appear 
less improbable, when we consider how rapidly, under favour- 
able circumstances, even in our comparatively temperate 
winters, ice is formed, and how unexpectedly birds or animals 
unaware of it, might in consequence be imprisoned. It is 
easy to form ice to a considerable extent, in a few minutes, if 
water is poured over a level surface so that none shall escape ; 
for instance, over a wide floor or plain, smoothed with Roman 
cement, flooded to the depth of less than a quarter of an inch. 
A thin coating of water thus applied, will, even if the ther- 
mometer is scarcely lower than the freezing-point, almost 
immediately become a sheet of ice, and if repeated two or 
three times, will form a covering, capable of bearing the 
heaviest weight without giving way. This was actually 
practised with success on three successive days in November, 
near Glasgow, for the purpose of preparing a perfectly smooth 
sheet of water on a roughly-frozen pond, for a game, called, 
in Scotland, a curling match. One-eighth of an inch in 
thickness was found sufficient; it immediately froze, and 
when the game was over at night, a similar additional coating 
was poured over it, for fresh use. 
We have seen that the common food of the Hawk tribe 
consists of animals or birds, dead or living, with the ex- 
ception of the Kestrel, which preys with equal satisfaction on 
beetles ; but there is one particular Hawk, called the Honey- 
buzzard (Falco apivorus), rather rare at present in England, 
whose favourite food is bees and wasps, (and not the honey of 
the former, as has been erroneously supposed from its name,) 
which it devours greedily, apparently without ever suffering 
