MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES. 231 



eggs, which I cleaned and blew. They are now in the possession of Mr. 

 D'Arcy. — W. Curtis, Lymington, Scptemher ^Oth., 1851. 



Witness to the above, T. Cox. 



P. S. The person who shot the Goshawk, and has it in his possession, 

 is Mr. Lightfoot, of Bashley, near Lymington. — W. C. 



Nidification of the Moorhen, (Gallinula chloropus.) — With regard to the nesting 

 of the Moorhen, I have no doubt but that the period mentioned for the appear- 

 ance of the first brood, by your correspondent, J. C, may, as respects 

 Devonshire, be correct^ but at the same time I may not be altogether out of 

 my reckoning. J. C. writes from Devonshire, I from the north-east corner of 

 Lincolnshire. In these two very far-distant counties, the difference of climate 

 will surely make a corresponding difference in the time of nidification. When I 

 left Lincolnshire this year for the south, in April last, the Rooks for instance, 

 were not at all advanced to that state when it is considered desirable to 

 make them into pics; but when I arrived in Bedfordshire, I found the 

 Rook-shooting commenced. Partridges are forwarder in the south than here; 

 and with regard also to vegetation, the corn is at least from two to three 

 weeks in advance of us in the more southern districts; and the south of this 

 county has even great advantage in this respect over my more northern 

 habitat. I am sorry I -was from home during the hatching of the first brood 

 of Moorhens this year; but when I left in the last week of April, I could 

 find no symptom of a nest, indeed there was no cover in our ditches or ponds 

 to affor J one a shelter. Some few in this district possibly may, and probably 

 do, hatch earlier than the end of May, in localities that are well adapted 

 for their purpose, in well sheltered situations in the neighbourhood of stack- 

 yards, where food is abundant, and in what are termed "early seasons;" but 

 I think the bitter cold springs we are subject to, and the want on that 

 account of proper cover in this district, may easily account for the difference 

 of a week or two in our accounts of the Moorhen's nesting. In the "Zoologist," 

 page 722, I find the following, from the pen of A. Newton, Esq., Eldon, 

 Suffolk: — ^'Moorhen's first egg laid 23rd. of April." Allowing all the eggs 

 to be laid by the 1st. of May, they would not be hatched until the latter 

 end of the third week, three weeks being the time of incubation. Again, 

 Yarrell, vol. iii., page 33, "The first brood generally are hatched the end of 

 May." — R. P. Alington, Sioinhope, November Sth., 1851. 



Anecdote of a Moorhen, (Gallinula chloropus.) — I was witness the other day 

 to an instance of the love of liberty in the Moorhen, which perhaps may be 

 worthy of notice. I was walking along the banks of the Rodding, in Essex. 

 with two retrievers, Avhen they flushed a Moorhen; and, after having hunted 

 it for some time, I discovered it close under the bank where I was standing; 

 but on my attempting to capture it, it deliberately dived to the bottom, (the 

 water was not above eighteen inches deep,) and remained under water while I 



