GEEEX SiL>T)PlPZE. 219 



Pinu» rvhra, and full of dry pine-leaves. The 20tli of 

 Mav two eggs, almost burst by the young, were found 

 in an old thrush's nest, the two missing birds having 

 most Hkely already left the nest. The 22nd of May 

 four young ones, apparently but a few hours old, were 

 found in the old nest of a Lanius collurio, in a juniper, 

 three feet high. The 24th of !May four young ones were 

 found in the hole of a Popidus iremula thrown down 

 by the wind. The year before Muscicapa luctuosa had 

 its nest in the trunk as it lay on the ground ; this year 

 Totanus ochropus had chosen the same opening. When 

 I approached the trunk, the young ones, perhaps four- 

 and-twenty hours old, jumped away and hid themselves 

 in the grass among the branches. All these nests were 

 near the water — two on the edge of a rivulet, the others 

 on wet morasses, the distance from the water being at 

 most sis feet.' " 



In further coroboration of the above, I may add 

 that M. Grerbi in his revised edition of Degland's 

 " Omithologie Europeenne " (vol. ii., p. 226), men- 

 tions his having received from the department of the 

 Basses-Alpes eggs of this species, said to have been 

 found in a nest placed on a bush by the side of a 

 torrent. Herr "Westerlund, also, in his '*' Skandinavisk 

 Oologi " (p. 201), quotes from a Swedish sporting maga- 

 zine an account given by a gamekeeper that he had 

 found this bird's eggs in a squirrel's nest, and that the 

 nestlings reach the ground by the very simple method of 

 being thrown down by their parents while quite young, 

 their thick downy clothing protecting their Hght bodies 

 from harm. 



Having thus far digressed, in order to show how 

 much our home naturalists* may have been misled, in 



* Mr. Knox, in ids " Ornithological Eambles in. Sussex," makes 

 one most important statement in his notes on this species — viz., 

 that four observed in June, 1843, "on the borders of a pond 

 2f2 



