PLURALITY OF NESTS 269 



obviously, as it seemed to me, the work of moorhens, 

 had a very unfinished appearance compared to the 

 one that fulfilled its legitimate purpose. Less 

 material had been used — though they varied in 

 regard to this — and they seemed to have been 

 formed, to a more exclusive extent, by the bending 

 over of the growing rushes. As I say, no eggs were 

 ever laid in these three nests, but in one of them I 

 once found the moorhen who had laid in the other, 

 sitting with her brood of young chicks. I have 

 little doubt but that she had made the four, and 

 was accustomed thus to sit in all of them. Whether 

 she had made the supernumerary ones with any 

 definite object of the sort, it is more difficult to say. 

 For myself, I doubt this ; but, at any rate, the 

 moorhen would seem to stand prominent amongst 

 the birds which have this habit of over-building, 

 as one may call it — a much larger body, I believe, 

 than is generally supposed. 



With the above habit, a much stranger one, 

 which, from a single observation, I believe this 

 species to have, is, perhaps, indirectly connected. 

 Moorhens, as a rule, lay a good many eggs — from 

 seven to eleven, if not, sometimes, more. I have, 

 however, upon various occasions, found them sitting 

 on a much smaller number — on four once, and once, 

 even, upon only three — notwithstanding that these 

 represented the first brood. The nest with only 

 three eggs I had watched for some days before the 

 hatching took place. It could hardly have been, 

 therefore, that others had been hatched out before, 

 and the chicks gone ; nor had it ever occurred to me 

 that the original number might have been artificially 



