1884-85-] Edinbui'gh Naturalists' Field Club. 199 



go to the woods of Combe and Packington ; and on the south side 

 of Edinburgh, where there are many small rookeries, I believe they 

 go to Dalkeith, for I have often observed them coming from that 

 direction about sunrise. 



One of Waterton's favourite birds was that most useful but per- 

 secuted bird the Barn-owl, for which he had constructed a nest in 

 a ruined tower. He afterwards increased the number of nests to 

 four, and, at the time he wrote, he hoped to have nine broods of 

 these birds on his property. He says : " This pretty aerial wan- 

 derer of the night often comes into my room on wing so soft and 

 silent that he is scarcely heard. He takes his departure by the 

 same window at which he had entered." Waterton observed that 

 these most valuable birds brought a mouse to their young every 

 twelve or fifteen minutes. In his protection of the Barn-owl, 

 Waterton found a warm sympathiser in his friend and correspon- 

 dent, Alfred Ellis of Belgrave, in Leicestershire — all bird-life being 

 protected there, as it was at Walton ; and I chance to know, from 

 some of his nearest relations, that there could scarcely be a more 

 truly humane and kind-hearted man than the owner of Belgrave. 



At Walton Hall there is a very extraordinary instance of the 

 power of arboreal growth. Near the ruins of a mill a millstone 

 seventeen feet in circumference had been left for some years, and a 

 Nut-tree grew through the centre hole. Waterton would not have 

 this disturbed, and the tree grew year after year till it filled up the 

 hole in the centre, and then gradually began to raise the stone 

 from its bed ; and when Waterton wrote, the stone was eight 

 inches above the ground, and entirely supported by the tree, which 

 had grown to the height of twenty-five feet, and bore excellent 

 fruit. Strangers often inspected this curiosity, and Waterton re- 

 marks that he never passed without its reminding him of poor old 

 John Bull with a weight of eight hundred millions of pounds round 

 his galled neck. It was a great pleasure to Waterton to walk with 

 visitors over his domain, especially to such as took an interest in 

 bird life, and show them the numerous living creatures under his 

 protection, — not forgetting the hole in the old gateway with pen- 

 dent ivy over it, which he constructed for the Barn-owl to rear her 

 annual brood ; or the twenty-four holes in the same erection made 

 by him for the twenty-four pairs of Starlings which annually built 

 there. 



Waterton was a thorough enthusiast in his study of nature. 

 Some years ago, on inquiring of an intimate friend of his what he 

 was doing, he told me that information had reached Walton that a 

 quadruped new to science had been discovered on the lower Nile, 

 and that Waterton had at once started for Egypt to see it. He was 

 most courageous under pain. He once had his finger shattered by 

 a gun accident, and he gathered together the shattered tendons. 



