MISCELLANY. 
105 
revived it from its torpor; it appeared to enjoy its transition by nimbly scaling 
every part of the furniture in all directions. It experienced no difficulty in 
either ascending or descending the polished backs of the chairs, and when I 
attempted to secure it it leaped from chair to chair with astonishing agility for so 
small a creature. On taking it into my hand, it shewed not the least disposition 
to resent the liberty; on the contrary it was very docile. On being set at liberty 
it sprang at least two yards on to a table. I was much gratified in witnessing 
its agile movements. In the evening I placed my little stranger with its original 
domicile in a box, of which on the following morning I found it had taken pos¬ 
session, and again relapsed into a state of torpidity, in which condition I transferred 
my unconscious deeper to a friend. I should think that by some accident its 
domicile had been displaced from the original situation, which was the cause of my 
finding it upon the surface of the ground,—J. D. Salmon, Godaiming , Surrey , 
Bee. 23, 1837. 
Instances of the Capture of Vanessa antiope. —In Captain Blomer's 
Journal, under the date of June 1, 1833, he mentions having met with the Rev. 
Mr. W alker, who told him of having seen a flight of Vanessa antiope pass over 
near Cheltenham, and that he took a few of them. Mr. Spragge took one near 
Chard in 1834, and Mr. Baker another (?) at Bridgewater. One was seen in 
company with V. atalanta and V. io , flying over and settling on an empty sugar- 
cask in a grocer’s yard there.—J. C. Dale, Glanvilles Wootton , Dorsetshire , 
July 9, 1837. 
Remarkable Fact. —In the early part of last week, whilst a servant belong¬ 
ing to Rowland Hibbert, Esq., of Lamb-Hill, near Sheffield, was brushing a 
hedge, he took off a bough which supported a Yellow Bunting's nest, and 
found four eggs therein in a forward state of incubation.— Doncaster Gazette , 
Jan. 12, 1838.—£That a bird seldom known, by the most experienced observers, 
to hatch before the beginning of June, or, at earliest, the latter end of May, 
should be possessed of a brood in the middle of a severe January, is indeed a 
“ remarkable fact ”—too remarkable, we think, for our readers to swallow with¬ 
out some doubts. We scarcely know what to make of several other newspaper 
accounts of Sparrows and Redbreasts building during the same month, while the 
snow was thick on the ground, unless we may suppose it to be a “wise 
ordination of providence,” to husband the latent heat in their little frames ! 
These, however, are birds which will always breed early when a favourable 
opportunity offers; but that a species which, like the Yellow Bunting, over 
whose family affairs variation of climate has no control, should, all on a sudden, 
be possessed with the desire of introducing its offspring into the world for the 
express purpose, as it were, of being starved to death—or, mayhap, of enlivening 
the columns of a provincial paper at Christmas-time !—at least requires further 
