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With the minnow, an excellent observer states, that on the spawning-beds the males are ten times as numerous as the females; when a female comes amongst the males, "she is immediately pressed closely by a male on each side; and when they have been in that situation for a time, are superseded by other two males." Yarrell, 'Hist.
If, however, these drawings represent six hundred distinct species of fish, they constitute, so far as I know, the largest collection of fish from one locality in existence. The number of known British fishes may be safely assumed to be less than 250, and Mr. Yarrell enumerates only 226, Dr. Cantor's valuable work on Malayan fishes enumerates not more than 238, while Dr.
Hydrobia marginata.* When I showed the scales and teeth of the pike, perch, roach, and salmon, which I obtained from this formation, to M. Agassiz, he thought they varied so much from their nearest living representatives that they might rank as distinct species; but Mr. Yarrell doubted the propriety of so distinguishing them.
In his notice of the Marsh Harrier Professor Newton says, in his edition of Yarrell, that birds' eggs are an irresistible delicacy; and, in speaking of the food of the present species, he says it consists chiefly of grasshoppers, reptiles, small mammals, birds and their eggs; these last, if their size permit, being often swallowed whole, as was the case in the instance mentioned by Miss Carey.
An interesting account of the nesting habits of this bird, and the discovery of the nests and eggs by Mr. Wolley, was published by Professor Newton in the 'Ibis' for 1861, and will be found also in Dresser's 'Birds of Europe. and in the new edition of 'Yarrell, by Professor Newton.
Arthur Yarrell, an undergraduate from Keble College, Oxford, whose mind was a dictionary of ecclesiastical terms, was accepted and a month later became a postulant as Brother Augustine, to the great pleasure of Brother Raymond, who said that he really thought he should have been compelled to leave the Order if somebody had not joined it with an appreciation of historic Catholicism.
MacCulloch mentions its feeding on the apple-pips, and doing damage in the orchards accordingly, and I know it is generally supposed to do so, and has in some places got the name of "Shell Apple" in consequence, but though I have several times kept Crossbills tame, and frequently tried to indulge them with apples and pips, I have never found them care much about them; and a note of Professor Newton's, in his edition of 'Yarrell, seems to agree with this.
Yet so far from this interval being allowed to elapse, the rains have no sooner fallen than the taking of the fish commences, and those captured by the natives in wicker cages are mature and full grown instead of being "small fish" or fry, as supposed by Mr. Yarrell.
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