HONEY BUZZARD. 
107 
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 thermometer 
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 Scot- 
land, 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 addi- 
tional 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 exception 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 sup- 
posed from its name,) which it devours greedily, 
apparently without ever suffering from their stings. 
There can be no longer any doubt as to the truth, 
one having been lately shot in the parish of Stoke 
Nayland, in Suffolk, by a person who saw it first 
