98 EALCO PEREGRINUS. 



[§ 217. FoNr.— West Finmark, 1 May, 1861. 



From the same nest as those in the last section. One of the eggs is very 

 remarkable, being of a flesh-colour, verging upon pale lilac, spotted with 

 irregularly shaped rusty markings. The rest have the ordinary appear- 

 ance.] 



§ 218. nree.—West Einmark, 16 April, 1858. 



Brought to Muoniovara by Heiki, and found by Lassi at the same 

 place as the eggs before mentioned, from which both birds were 

 killed in 1857 [§ 203 and § 204]. The nest was about six ells high, 

 in a cliff. 



[§ 219. i^o^r.— West Finmark, 1 May, 1861. "With hen 

 bird." 



From a nest which had been robbed several times before, though none of 

 the eggs taken then are now in my possession. The skin of the bird killed 

 from it accompanied these specimens. It is a truly tj^ical Faico gyrfalco, 

 darkly coloured, and having all the look of a very old bird.] 



FALCO PEREGRINUS, Gmelin. 

 PEREGRINE FALCON. 



[Besides those mentioned in the following text, Mr. Wolley's note-books 

 show that he visited many other Falcons' breeding-places in Scotland, and 

 a few in England. Several of the nests he saw were quite inaccessible even 

 to him, though possessed of so much nerve for rock-climbing. Others con- 

 tained young ones, some of which he can-ied off and brought up. Thus he 

 had a very considerable personal acquaintance with the economy of this 

 species ; but the notes are too diffuse for insertion here. In a commimication 

 made to INIr. Hewitson in 1853 (Eggs B. B. ed. 3, pp. 24, 25), he states that, 

 on the Continent, it not unfrequeutly breeds in church-steeples in the thickly 

 peopled centre of a city, and also that it often takes possession of the nest of 

 a Raven in which to lay its eggs. It is indeed remarkable how many times 

 Mr. WoUey observed the Falcon and the Haven tenanting in common the same 

 rocky ledges. In one nest, containing four yoimg ones, on an island off" the 

 coast of Sutherlandshire, he mentions besides that he found, among other 

 spoil, the wing of a Kestrel, — a circumstance apparently contradicting the 

 common Scottish proverb that "Hawks dinna pick at Hawks' eyn." 



The persistency with which Falcons and other birds of prey continue, 

 during a gi'eat number of years, to use one spot for breeding is tolerably well 

 known ; but one singular instance I cannot refrain from mentioning here. In 

 1736, when the French Astronomical Expedition for ascertaining the figure 



