Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/44

22 prisoners. They bathe frequently, almost immoderately. They take nearly any sort of food; for instance, the flour of Indian corn mixed with grated cheese, paste, boiled rice, minced polenta, little bits of raw meat, and other things. In spite of their facility in adapting themselves to a state of captivity, it is not to be assumed that all Rose-coloured Starlings can support it without ill consequences or for long. Within two months a great mortality was noticed among them, amounting to about eighty per cent. The young were subject to a disease which swelled their toes, and that was almost always followed in a short time by death.

In conclusion, I may remark that the appearance of Pastor roseus in such thousands, and its nidification with us to such an extent, ought to be regarded as a real benefit to the country round Villafranca, where the locusts did so much damage, as well as a piece of good luck to the clever speculators; and lastly, in what concerns us most, it is a new and important fact in the history of Italian Birds.

 

—A pale orange variety of the common Mole was caught, a few weeks since, at Halton, near Tring, by Billington, the village mole-catcher and binlstuffer, and brought to me.—H. Harpur Crewe (The Rectory, Drayton-Beauchamp, Tring).

[See page 225, where a somewhat similar variety of the Mole is recorded by Mr. Prior to have been obtained near Bedford.—.]

—In the neighbourhood of Wilsden the Long-eared Bat, Plecotus auritus, was extremely abundant in 1876, and this was all the more noticeable from the fact of its comparative scarcity in previous years, its place hitherto having been occupied by the Common Pipistrelle.—E.P.P. Butterfield (Wilsden).

—On the 16th August I shot a Wood Sandpiper, a young bird of the year, which rose at a distance and settled again, and which I thought at first was a Green Sandpiper. It made a twittering noise, something resembling the note of the Common Sandpiper, and I shot it as it rose the second time from some longish grass and weeds. Green Sandpipers were not uncommon for a few