PERNIS APIVORUS. 



119 



he possessed; but 1 have so arranged that you need not feel the 

 sKghtest scruple in placing it in the collection, where both eggs ought 

 to be." 



[It appears to me that Mr. Wilmot, in the above passage, has rather under- 

 rated this specimen. It is not, I confess, a verj' richly coloured one, but it is, 

 I think I may say, quite as good as the average in this respect, as it is supe- 

 rior to them in the interest which attaches to it from its history, the parti- 

 culars of which I here subjoin, extracted from the ' Zoologist ' for 1844, p. 437. 



" Early in the month of July, 1838, a female honey-buzzard was shot ofl" 

 her nest, in Wellgrove-wood, in the parish of Bix, near Henley-on-Thames, by 

 a gamekeeper of Lord Camoy's, named Lowe. The bird, with two eggs taken 

 from the nest, passed into the hands of a bird-stuffer at Henley, of the name 

 of Hewer. I was then resident in the Temple, and being an eager collector 

 of the eggs of British birds, had engaged a young friend, Mr. Ralph Mapleton, 

 then living at Henley, to secure for me any rare eggs that he might have an 

 opportunity of obtaining. Mr. Mapleton communicated to me the above 

 occurrence, and at my request purchased the eggs for me. I afterwards saw 

 the bird at the shop of Mr. Hewer, at Henley. The male bird, which con- 

 tinued to haunt the neighbourhood of the nest, was not long after kUled by 

 another of Lord Camoy's gamekeepers. The nest, a very large one, was placed 

 in the fork of a beech tree, and was built of sticks of considerable size, with 

 which were intermixed twigs with the leaves on. The lining was composed of 

 leaves and wool; a great portion of the nest was, I am told, remaining in the 

 tree a short time ago [1844]. I made no note of the occurrence at the time, 

 but since my attention was drawn to the subject by the appearance of the 

 observations before referred to [Mr. W. R. Fisher, ' Zoologist,' 1843, p. 375, 

 and Mr. Hewitson, ' Eggs B. B.,' p. 27], I have assisted my memory by appli- 

 cation to Mr. Hewer, and by his aid am enabled to give the above particulars 

 with confidence as to their accuracy. He informs me that the pair of birds 

 are in the coUection of W. Fuller Maitland, Esq., of Park Place, near 



Henley." 



In 1862, Mr. FuUer-Maitland infonned me that the birds here mentioned were 

 still in his possession. After mentioning two other recent instances of the 

 Honey-Buzzard breeding in England, Mr. Wilmot proceeds to add(/oc. cit. p. 4:39) 

 — " The nest near Henley contained two eggs only, and the state of the eggs 

 indicated that the bird had accomplished full one half of her period of incu- 

 bation, and had consequently laid her complement. Of these eggs, one [the 

 subject of this note] was inferior in size to the other, less strongly marked, 

 and much more pointed at the smaller end. The largest eg^ [' Eggs B. B.' 

 ed. 3. pi. 15. fig. 1] is about 2 inches long by If inch in breadth, and has the 

 colom-ing, which has e^ndently lost somewhat of its brilliancy by incubation, 

 pretty equally distributed over the whole surface. In other respects it re- 

 sembles the specimen figured by Mr. Hewitson^ [' Eggs B. B.' pi. x.], and 

 when newly laid, must have been a splendid egg." 



I cannot "reftain from here noticing the pleasing fact that these eggs were 

 the means of Mr. Hewitson and Mr. Wilmot becoming known to each other— 

 \\nth what advantage to oology all egg-collectors recognize, though of the inti- 

 mate friendship into which that acquaintance has ripened few may be aware. 



