§40 Notices of hooks. [October, 
eating birds. The decrease of many insectivorous species is due 
not so much to any act of the farmers as to nest-hunting boys, 
holiday sportsmen, and to those professional bird-catchers who 
are fcund in all our large towns, and who, in utter defiance of 
the statute decreeing a “ close time ” for small birds, extend their 
ravages for fifty miles around London. 
If a digression may be here permitted, we are informed that 
the starling — a purely insectivorous and most useful bird, and 
one which Mr. Williams will find eats larvae not merely when 
hard pressed for food — is debarred from even the doubtful pro- 
tection of the Wild Birds Protection Act. The reason assigned 
is, that it is sometimes selected as the victim of those eminently 
British institutions, gun-clubs. In this humanitarian, anti- 
vivisectionist, and moreover thoroughly practical country, the 
infliction of pain and death — even in defiance of utilitarian con- 
siderations — is a sacred institution if wanton amusement is the 
object ; but if valuable knowledge is sought for the deed becomes 
an “ orgy of diabolism.” 
Like many other travellers, from the time of Linnaeus down- 
wards, Mr. Williams was annoyed by the musquitoes of Lapland, 
which are here no less numerous than in any tropical swamp. 
To explain their abundance in these high latitudes he points to 
the total absence of swallows. That these birds do contribute 
powerfully towards the reduction of such minute vermin is un- 
doubted ; but musquitoes, unfortunately, are quite able to co-exist 
with swallows ; indeed, varying in name and in trifling mor- 
phological details much more than in malignity, they infest 
upwards of three-fourths of the land on this our globe, and afford 
to the teleologist and the optimist a riddle which has not yet 
found its (Edipus. 
Our author’s main objecft, in both his visits to Norway, appears 
to have been the study of the so-called Glacial epoch. On this 
subject he has reached conclusions different from those formed 
by certain other geologists. He does not at all question the 
former u existence of two or more such epochs during the later 
period of the Tertiary age, with an intervening warm period or 
periods.” But he considers that the magnitude of the pheno- 
mena has been greatly exaggerated. He quotes from Mr. Geikie’s 
“ Great Ice Age ” (p. 561) a passage which we may here repro- 
duce for the convenience of the reader : — “ All Northern Europe 
and Northern America disappeared under a thick crust of ice 
and snow, and the glaciers of such regions as Switzerland 
assumed gigantic proportions. This great sheet of land ice 
levelled up the valleys of Britain, and stretched across our 
mountains and hills down to low latitudes in England. Being 
only one connected or confluent series of mighty glaciers, the 
ice crept ever downwards and outwards from the mouncains, fol- 
lowing the direction of the principal valleys, and pushing far out 
to sea, where it terminated at last in deep water, many miles 
