50 YEARS AGO

It is well known that myxomatosis has caused a high mortality among wild rabbit populations in most parts of England and Wales... Where it has been possible to make accurate observations, a mortality-rate of about 99 per cent was found... Only in one part of the country, the Sherwood Forest area of Nottinghamshire, have attenuated strains of the virus been found in rabbits. In this area estate workers and the Ministry's field-officers noted from April 1955 onwards the presence of an unusual number of individuals that appeared to be recovering... It is emphasized that the attenuation of the myxoma virus in part of Sherwood Forest is an isolated case, affects only a relatively small area, and calls for an increase rather than a slackening of efforts to destroy surviving rabbits.

From Nature 22 October 1955.

100 YEARS AGO

Field Book of Wild Birds and their Music — This is a very pretty little book, with many charming illustrations of American singing-birds, and numerous attempts to represent their songs in our musical notation. It would seem as if the songs of American birds lent themselves more readily than those of our European species to such notation, for this is by no means the first attempt of this kind which has recently been made on the other side of the water. The present reviewer is under the disadvantage of not having heard these birds in their native land, and is quite ready to believe that Mr. Mathews's musical notations may give an American the vague idea of what his birds sing; at the same time, as one whose knowledge of music is even older than his knowledge of birds, he must emphatically express a hope that British ornithologists will not imitate their American brethren in trying to render our familiar songs on this system... by far the greater number can only be represented in the amusing way in which Mr. Mathews has noted the song of the bobolink — by a cloudy jumble of notes and lines... which suggests a flute-player gone mad.

From Nature 19 October 1905.