GREEN SANDPIPER. 219 
Pinus rubra, and full of dry pine-leaves. The 20th of 
May two eggs, almost burst by the young, were found 
in an old thrush’s nest, the two missing birds having 
most likely 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 Populus tremula 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 six feet.’” 
In further coroboration of the above, I may add 
that M. Gerbi in his revised edition of Degland’s 
“ Ornithologie Européenne” (vol. u., 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 light bodies 
from harm. 
Having thus far digressed, in order to show how 
much our home naturalists* may have been misled, in 
* Mr. Knox, in his “ Ornithological Rambles in Sussex,” makes 
one most important statement in his notes on this species—-viz., 
that four observed in June, 18438, “on the borders of a pond 
22 
