made my plans accordingly : for it takes a lot of calculation to

raise a nest of insectivorous birds. Some folks say that babies

take a lot of rearing ; but I would rather rear ten babies than

one nest of Spectacle Thrushes. I know that Mark Twain says

somewhere that * one baby can furnish more business than you

and your Interior Department can attend to’; but then Mark

had never kept birds! Set him down to rear a nest of young

Spectacle Thrushes and he would alter his view, and not be long

about it either.


I felt a little bit proud over this affair. ‘ There aint but

phew men who kail stick a whole henkerchief into the brest

pocket ov their overcoat without letting a little ov it stick out—

just by acksident.’


Here my article must end abruptly, for the Thrushes

declined, for some reason, to sit ; but still, as no one, so far as I

know, has ever got so far as eggs, I thought this paper might be

of interest. Next summer, if we all live and things go well, I

hope to record some young Spectacles.



THE BREEDING SEASON, 1900.


By W. H. St. Ouintin.


Without having anything very novel to tell, I am tempted

to send you a few facts relating to last breeding season. It was

an exceedingly late Spring in this district. I did not hear the

first Chiffchaff until April 10th ; while on the same date, I have

a note that, in a plantation on the north side of our Wolds, about

three miles from here, snow that fell in the blizzard of 15th

February was still unmelted !


Amongst the Pheasants etc, running in a large enclosure,

a female Cabot’s Tragopan laid two eggs in an old Woodpigeous’

nest nine feet up in a yew tree, and sat steadily. But, as at that

time I had no male of her species, I removed the eggs. A

Grey-hen, after being missing for some ten da} r s, was found

sitting on seven eggs in a nesthole so cleverly scooped out in the

grass, that the bird’s back was level with the surface of the

ground, and she was very difficult to see. Although in this case

there was a fine male bird, whose display in the early Spring was

most amusing, these eggs did not hatch, possibly from having

been touched by a night frost before the bird began to sit.


A Pink-footed Goose, tame-bred last year, nested ; but her

eggs were unfertile. But a pair of Whitefronted Geese, which

for the previous three seasons had laid only clear eggs, under



