440 MEROPID^. 



of Gibraltar by the Bee-eater has been repeatedly observed 

 by Col. Irby, and in some parts of Portugal and Spain* it is 

 very common. In France its appearance is rarer, for it 

 generally occurs throughout that country as casually as 

 with us, though it breeds yearly in Provence, and, according 

 to Degland, on Baillon's authority, it did so, in July 1840, 

 at Pont-Kemy near Abbeville.f 



The nest is invariably at the end of a hole bored in the 

 ground, a bank or sand-hill being generally chosen, and many 

 pairs of birds resorting to the same place for the purpose 

 of breeding. The hole is usually pierced horizontally for 

 some three or four feet, and then enlarged into a spherical 

 chamber about a foot in diameter. This, however, is in 

 some cases unused, and another passage about a foot long 

 leads to a second chamber. Col. Irby says he has known 

 the holes to reach a distance of eight or nine feet, and, 

 where there was no suitable bank, to be sunk vertically from 

 the surface, adding that the bird's bill is sometimes worn 

 away by its mining operations to less than half the usual 

 length. Mr. Salvin observes (Ibis, 1859, p. 303) that the 

 marks left by the birds' feet in passing in and out, together 

 with the absence of fresh earth below the hole, generally give 

 a sure sign of the nest being finished and of its containing 

 eggs. These, to the number of six or eight, are mostly 

 globular, and of a glossy, translucent white, measuring from 

 1'09 to '95 by from '92 to "7 in. They are laid on the bare 

 soil!, though, as incubation proceeds, the floor of the chamber 

 becomes strewn with the legs and wing-cases of the insects 

 which form the birds' food and are their castings, allowed to 

 accumulate in such quantities that a handful may be taken 

 up at once. Lord Lilford says (Ibis, 1860, p. 236) that he 

 has seen three or four old birds fly from the same hole, a 



* Montagu in 1813 added somewhat to the scant knowledge of this bird then 

 possessed, by the information, derived from an officer engaged before Badajos in 

 1811, that it was not uncommon there. 



+ See also Le Correur (Rev. Zool. 1840, p. 355) who evidently refers to the 

 same event, though the locality named is Liencourt, about half a league ofl". 



X Some of the older writers declare that the bird lines its nest with moss, but 

 nearly all modern observers agree iu the statement above given. 



