VOL. VI.] 



NOTES. 



23 



Nesting operations in the garden here are early this year, a 

 Song-Thrush having four eggs on March 12th, and another 

 young on March 29th ; a Blackbird one egg on March 16th, 

 while on April 5th I found twenty-four nests, viz. two Hedge- 

 Sparrow, twelve Thrush, six Blackbird, tAvo Starling, one 

 Mistle-Thrush, and one Robin, all with eggs or young. 



Herbert Masse y. 

 [This is a remarkably early date for the Moor-Hen, but 

 curiously enough Mr. J. H. Owen informs me that on March 

 28th, 1912, he found a nest with one egg at Felsted, Essex. 

 Exceptionally young, two or three days old, were found at 

 Hoveton, Norfolk, on April 2nd (c/. Birds of Norfolk, II., 

 p. 416) and Mr. O. A. J. Lee found highly incubated eggs 

 on April 6th near Callander, N.B. — F. C. R. Jourdain.] 



Persistence of the Right Ovary and its duct in Birds. 

 Mr. T. E. Gunn contributes a paper to the Proceedings 

 of the Zoological Society (1912, pp. 63-79, Plates II.-V.) on 

 this subject, in which he tabulates a number of observations 

 made by himself as well as those published in our pages 

 (c/. Vols. IV., pp. 188-9, 216-8, V., pp. 45-9). Mr. Gunn 

 shows in the early part of the paper that authors have made 

 few and slight references to the presence of a second ovary. 

 The majority indeed do not admit the presence of a right 

 ovary at all in the adult female. He comes to the con- 

 clusion that neither death nor disaster is " the necessary 

 or even common result of paired ovaries," and goes so far as 

 to suggest that the suppression of the second ovary is a 

 " retrograde step." Mr. Gunn has made observations on this 

 point since 1892, and has come across forty-five instances 

 of double ovaries. Of these thirty-three have been in the 

 Falconidse. The proportional figures are very interesting, 

 and well worth reproducing here : — 

 Compiled from Mr. Gunn's notes, enumerating the species examined 



and the proportion of double ovaries occurring. 

 Specimens obtained in Great Britain. 



/ Sparrow -Hawk (Ac- 



cipiter n. nisus) 

 [Kestrel (Falco t. tin- 

 Falco I nunculus) . . 



\'i \ Hobby {F. s. subbuteo) 

 = 55.55 [Peregrine (F. p. pere- 

 \ griniis) 

 (Hen-Harrier (Circus 



cyaneus) 

 I Montagu's Harrier 



(C. pygargus) 

 I Marsh-Harrier (C. mru- 

 ginosus) 



14 out of 20 females examined 



12 



=750/. 



