pedestal and thus shelters, as an umbrella, the ground at the foot of the stump. Thus there is a hollow beneath each mushroom, and this was the case also with those which in late winter only showed as bosses, owing to the rise of the snow level all round them. Hence it is treacherous ground near the edge of these bosses, and one may readily fall through into a pit almost empty of snow.

The tree stumps are commonly from two feet to two feet six inches across, and, at the time of our visit, these supported snowcaps about nine feet in diameter. Upon this base I do not think much more snow could accumulate. On the other hand, if the stumps were giant trees such as are met with nearer the Pacific, having a diameter of, say, fourteen feet, a snow-cap five feet thick would have more the appearance of a flat roofing or thatch of snow with projecting eaves, and would therefore not be so striking a feature in the landscape. Smaller trees, on the other hand, cannot support the whole depth of so great a snowfall, and the cap, having a smaller thickness, there is not sufficient pressure to squeeze out the air from the lower layers, and thus weld the snow into a tenacious mass. The snow-caps on the stumps of smaller trees are therefore not only less striking, but are unstable and soon fall; whereas the large snow mushrooms are remarkably stable and seem to be practically permanent during the continuance of winter. Thus there is round Glacier House such a happy proportionality between the size of the forest trees and the depth of the winter snowfall that wherever a tree is felled there grows in its place a great snow mushroom.

The Nesting of a Vair of Wissel Thrushes from the Observations

of Mrs. N. M. Richardson.

By NELSON M. RICHARDSON, B.A., F.E.S.
(Read December 3rd, 1901.)

A CERTAIN relative of Mrs. Richardson's, who used to

write poetry rather well, had a wife who, when her husband's writings were praised, would say "Ah, yes, John wrote it, but I give him all the ideas; he merely makes the rhymes." This was not, I believe, strictly accurate in that case, but in the present instance I feel rather like that unfortunate gentleman, for what is put down as my paper is

taken entirely from a series of most elaborate and patient observations made by Mrs. Richardson on the nesting of a pair of missel thrushes last spring. The only part I have contributed is the photographs.

We have generally had at least one pair of missel thrushes building in our garden at Montevideo (in the parish of Chickerell, near Weymouth), but this year (1901) a pair were so obliging as to build their nest in the fork of an apple tree only about 11 feet distant from one of the first floor windows. The only trouble was that there was no second story in that part of the house, and one could not, even from the top of the window, see well down into the bottom of the nest. The birds, especially the hen, were very shy and took fright at the least.

movement, which caused considerable difficulty in taking the photographs. I could only manage it by drawing blind and curtain, and hiding everything but the shutter of the camera, and even then the snap of the shutter always frightened away the hen, though the cock occasionally stood his ground, though alarmed. Had it not had this protection, I could not have got near enough to take a photograph which would show the bird with an ordinary lens.

The " cleaning of the nest" mentioned in the notes, refers to the following process, which was usually performed by the cock whenever he fed the young ones, but occasionally by the hen. After he had finished feeding the young ones, one of them would put up its tail and wag it, upon which the cock would immediately jump round to that side of the nest, and place his beak under the tail of the young bird to receive the dropping which it thereupon emitted. This the cock always swallowed until the last two or three days, when he carried it off to a considerable distance from the nest. He was once seen to drop it at a distance of about 30 yards, so that it may be presumed that whenever he carried it away he did not swallow it. The same remarks apply to the hen when she performed this process. After finishing with one young bird he would, as a rule, attend to the others in the same way. This method of cleaning the nest is not, I believe, confined to the missel thrush, but is practised by, at all events, some other birds, and accounts for the extreme cleanliness of their nests, which could hardly otherwise be obtained.

The total number of times on which one of the old birds was observed to feed the young ones was 84, out of which number they were fed only 11 times by the hen and 73 times by the cock. The hen was occupied during so much of the time in sitting on the nest that she had probably usually enough to do whilst off to obtain sufficient food for herself. She was twice observed to take part of that brought by the cock and give it to the young [Ap. 5, 12.29 and 12.43 p.m.].

I append here a table giving the dates and times of all the feedings observed.

TABLE I.

SHOWING TIMES OF FEEDING YOUNG BIRDS ON DIFFERENT DAYS. ALL THE FEEDING BY THE COCK, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED. The numbers on the right hand of each column are the intervals between successive feedings given in minutes. The numbers in brackets are the number of feedings observed during the day.

Table II. gives the longest, shortest, and average intervals between successive feedings in minutes. Fractions of minutes smaller than quarters are not counted.

TABLE II.

SHEWING THE Longest, Shortest, and Average Intervals BETWEEN SUCCESSIVE FEEDings.

From this table it will be seen that the average interval between the feedings decreased irregularly from 183 and 19 minutes on the two first days to 73 and 5 minutes on the last two days, when (except during the two first recorded feedings of Ap. 18, which I have not included in this table) there was only one young bird under observation, the other two having flown. The shortest time noted between two successive feedings was one minute [Ap. 18, 1.27-1.28 p.m.]; but the first of these was by the hen, the second by the cock. The shortest interval between two successive feedings by the cock was two minutes on one occasion [Ap. 19, 12.58-1.0 p.m.] and three minutes on several occasions. The shortest intervals between successive feedings by the hen were 38 and 45 minutes, both on April 10. The average interval, taking into account all the observations during the whole 16 days, was 12 minutes, so that, supposing feeding to have gone on at this average rate for 14 hours a day, the number of meals required by a young missel thrush until it left the nest would be something like 70 a day, or a total of over 1,100-each young bird devouring perhaps 700 or more worms,

One young bird only.

Ap. 18. Ap. 19.