[1] Many birds are accustomed to eject the indigestible portions of their food—bones, fur, feathers, etc., or the shells and shards of crustaceans and insects—in the form of balls or pellets, which are, indeed, very interesting objects, and both scientifically and as not leading to the extermination of the species, would make a far preferable collection to one of birds’ eggs. Let anyone who doubts this pick up upon some gull-haunted island a score or so of the curious little globes made of fragments of crab-shells cemented together, which lie all about, or some of the dried frog-pellets of owls, over a marsh. He must then—or he ought to—confess that such objects are more curious, if less pretty, than birds’ eggs—which, however, as ornaments, nobody values in the least—whilst by their very nature they teach us something in regard to the habits of each species, which the latter do not. The pellets of rooks, for instance, which I have found by the hundred, composed, some entirely of innutritious vegetable materials, and others (almost entirely) of earth, are most instructive from this point of view. In fact, the results and tendencies springing out of this kind of collecting would be wholly advantageous both to birds and to natural history; so that one of the most useful things that could be started in these “killing times” would be a club or fraternity of such collectors.
[2] The nest is contained within the hanging leaves, which are its sole support—this, at least, is my impression. Now if the nest is made first, on what does it rest—where is it—before the leaves wrap it round?
In the tout ensemble the leaves correspond to the outer cup of the nest, and the nest proper to the inner lining. It is the latter which, in the ordinary building of a nest, comes last.
[3] Particularly and most remarkably in the case of spiders. In one species, for instance, the males are of two patterns, as one may say, each of which dances before the female, in its own way, which is very different from that of the other (see Professor Poulton’s Colours of Animals in the “International Scientific Series”).
[4] By Mr. Hudson in The Naturalist in La Plata.
[5] In South America at least.
[6] This last, I should say, is as I imagine. Nobody tells one how the bridge itself gets over.
[7] This floor, however, according to Professor Drummond, may be sunk considerably below the level of the ground, which would make it, more properly speaking, a basement.
[8] In spite of the damage done by them, however, white ants, by turning over the soil, play an important part in the economy of nature, and take, in the tropics, the place of earthworms. See Professor Drummond’s Tropical Africa.
[9] Wanderings in South America, pp. 223-4.