134
NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
off and the other begins, but in an examination of Mid-Glacial Gravel extending
over some years, I have never come across striated stones, whilst these are very
common in the Boulder-Clay, a circumstance also implying the absence of an
abrading ice-sheet.
In Mr. S. V. Wood's paper on "The Newer Pliocene Period in England,"
(Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxvi. 1880), he gives several illustrations of the
quiet deposition of Boulder-Clay on Mid-Glacial Gravel, and on pages 4S6 and
487 of the volume cited the following passage is to be found : "There can, I
think, be no question that these instances show that by some means the moraine
of which the clay is composed was introduced tranquilly over a sea-bottom in
which sand and gravel had up to this time been accumulating."
J. French.
Felstead, June 13th, 1891.
NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
Badger at Asheldham.—While rabbit shooting the other day over the
Asheldham Hall estate, Mr. J. T. Gale and party unearthed a fine badger. It is
many years since a badger was caught in the Dengie Hundred.—" Essex County
Chronicle," May 29th, 1891,
Another Rorqual in the Crouch River.—On the morning of the 7th
April, the men on board the "Jumbo" (s.) saw a whale, which they said was
about fifty feet in length, almost at the same spot where the one was captured in
February, near the mouth of the Roach. Some men at work in that river had
heard it blowing during the night. It was subsequently seen distinctly by several
persons on the sands at the mouth of the Crouch, and is said to have been
stranded, but when the tide returned it made a successful departure from this
almost inaccessible position.—E. A. FITCH, Maldon.
A Swallow's "pendent bed and procreant cradle."—In the "Essex
Herald" for June 9th, it is stated that a pair of swallows have built their nest on
the knot of a rope carried from one rafter to another in a workshop in the village
of Blackmore. The nest hangs in mid air.
Homing Instinct of Hyla arborea, L.—Our member, Mr. E. N. Buxton,
writes as follows to the "Zoologist" for June :—" wo and a-half years ago I
put a small green frog (Hyla arborea) that my daughter brought from the
South of France, into my conservatory here (' Knighton,' Buckhurst Hill). In
the following spring he began to croak and, contriving to make his escape, found
his way to the pond where his strident voice awoke the echoes every summer
evening. He always remained about the same spot, which was about three
hundred yards from the conservatory. Now comes the extraordinary part of his
history. When the winter came on, he found his way back to the conservatory.
This performance he repeated last year, and now again he has found his voice.
That so small a creature should remember where he had been comfortable in
winter, and find his way back to the conservatory across an open lawn, seems to
me very extraordinary."
Sea Lamprey in the Colne.—I saw lately a very fine specimen, weighing
about four pounds, of the Sea Lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) which had been