NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. 
57 
The Jackdaw. —It may be interesting to some of your readers to 
know that a pair of jackdaws located themselves for a time in the very 
heart of the busiest part of Birmingham. In the spring of last year 
these birds took possession of the elevated spire of the Cobden Coffee 
House, in Corporation street. During the nesting season it was most 
amusing to see the way in which the birds supplied themselves with 
building material. From daylight until about 8 a.m. the pair were 
engaged in collecting sticks, Ac., which were deposited on the roof of 
an adjoining building. The remainder of the day was occupied in 
carrying supplies from the store to the nest. Occasionally the birds 
would perch on the vane—one at each end—and on a windy day the 
vane would actually go round without at all disturbing the occupants 
of this exalted position. Though the nest was prepared, and one or 
other of the birds was to be seen daily during the period of incubation, 
it is somewhat doubtful whether young birds were hatched. It was 
not until September that any increase in numbers was noticed ; but on 
this occasion there was considerable commotion round the spire, four 
pairs of birds being observed, all apparently making a careful examina¬ 
tion of the amount of accommodation available for another season. 
It would be interesting to know the district from which these jackdaws 
came, and why they selected a place so far from any feeding ground. 
It appears somewhat remarkable that they should have selected this 
new spire in preference to the larger and older building of St. Philip’s 
Church, which is only about a hundred yards distant. At the present 
time (January) the place is visited daily for about two hours by one 
pair of birds only. W. H. 
Nitrates. —Of the salts just mentioned, the nitrates are of extreme 
importance, inasmuch as nitrogen is an essential constituent of 
protoplasm—without nitrogen there can be no protoplasm, without 
protoplasm there can be no plant. The nitrogen is supplied to the 
plants from the soil in the form either of nitrates (potassic nitrate, 
sodic nitrate), or of ammonia salts in which the nitrogen is in 
combination with hydrogen. The ammonia in the soil is made to 
combine with oxygen, and thus to form nitric acid, through the 
agency of minute organisms called “ Bacteria,” which, like the yeast 
fungus, act as ferments; and by their agency it is, as Mr. Warington 
has pointed out, in confirmation of the researches of Schloesing and 
Muntz, that the ammonia salts, which themselves are inert, or it may 
be harmful, get converted into useful nitrates. Ammonia salts 
applied to some soils do no good, because the needful germs or ferment 
bodies are not present in the soil; but where they do exist, they 
convert the useless into the useful, as before said. These bacteria 
occur in all fermenting material, such as farmyard dung, whose value 
as manure is in part accounted for by their presence and agency. It 
is probable in the future that just as the brewer uses his yeast to 
secure the conversion of starch into sugar, and the chemist “ seeds” 
his solutions to effect the changes he wishes to bring about, and just as 
the gardener sows the spawn or germs of mushrooms in his mushroom 
bed, and obtains thereby a crop of succulent fungi, so the farmer may 
be able to apply to the soil the ferment-producing germs needed to 
change its quality, and render it available for plant food. When we 
have arrived at that point, manuring will be reduced to a science, and 
a pinch of the right material will be as efficient as a ton of our present 
compounds, the larger part of which are undoubtedly wasted under 
existing circumstances.—Dr. Maxwell T. Masters, F.K.S., in his 
“ Plant Life." (London : Bradbury, Agnew, and Co.) 
