THE. AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 175 
At Barbados nearly every bit of the island is under culti- 
vation, so that there is no forest land, and most of the birds 
are found in the open ground around the swamps. At the 
Marine Hotel there were large flocks of small blackbirds and 
sparrows that used to come up and rest on the window sills 
in a very friendly manner, and even come into the dining- 
room for bits of bread. Two popular dishes are worth 
noting: ‘‘Sea eggs,’’ the ovae taken out of ‘‘sea urchins,’’ 
which the negroes obtain by diving off the reefs. These 
eggs are mixed with batter and cooked, and eaten like a 
pudding. The second are flying-fish, for fried flying-fish is 
served up‘ every morning at the hotels. They are caught off 
the reefs by placing a strong light at the stern of the boat, 
and then when they come round in the water in swarms, 
slipping a net round and hauling them in. Barbados, 
though it has much swampy land, is singularly free from 
mosquitoes, the reason being that the waters swarm with 
tiny minnows that eat all the mosauito larvae. 
In passing through England and Southern Europe there 
is no need to go into the hatural history, as it is so well 
known, but one of the things that struck me was how 
abundant moles were all over the south and midlands of 
England; all the fields were covered with rows of little 
black mounds of soil thrown up from their underground ex- 
cavations; and Mr. Theobald, at Wye College, said that in 
a field of 20 acres, close to the college, the farmer had cap- 
tured 2000 moles. They did not kill moles at the college 
on principle, but when they found one trespassing on their 
well-kept lawn they sank an empty jam jar in his line of 
march, into which he usually blundered, and was then taken 
out and liberated in a field where he could do no harm. | 
In the South of France one sees manv blacklWirds, thrushes, 
and now and then a magpie flies across the road, but the 
latter always struck me that its tail was in its road. In 
Italy, particularly in the south, one seldom sees any birds: 
in the fields or gardens, because ‘not only do the Italian 
farmers eat all their own birds, but they put up traps ail 
along the coast and kill thousands of the migratory birds 
that rest on their coast after crossing over from Africa. In 
Austria and Hungary, on the other hand, they do everything 
they can to protect their bird fauna, even to placing hundreds 
of artificial nests in the trees in the forests and gardens 
around Budapest. 
