358 SYLViiD.?:. 



concealment : one was found among the roots of a tree on a 

 bankside, in just such a place as a Redbreast would choose. 

 The materials employed are dead tamarisk- shoots for the 

 outside, the inside and lining being usually feathers mixed 

 with wool or camels' hair, and in nine cases out of ten a 

 small piece of serpent's sldn is placed loosely on the bottom 

 of the nest. The fact last mentioned was also invariably 

 noticed by Canon Tristram in Palestine (Ibis, 1867, p. 80) 

 and has not yet been explained * ; but it is remarkal)le 

 that the same peculiarity has been observed by Mr. Theo- 

 bald and Beavan {tom. cit. p. 445) in nests of an Indian 

 species of Thamnohla, a genus near which Aedon, on other 

 grounds, has been placed. In Southern Spain, according to 

 Mr. Saunders, the nest is commonly placed in the hedges of 

 cactus. The eggs are from three to five in number, curiously 

 resembling those of the Tawny Pipit, to lie hereafter de- 

 scribed, being of a french-white, blotched with light ash-colour, 

 and generally thickly freckled and streaked with hair-brown. 

 They measure from "9 to '81 by from 'GG to '59 in., and in 

 Algeria are laid about the third week of May. 



Originally taken for a species of Thrush, Temminck provi- 

 sionally placed it among the aquatic Warblers, and, though 

 afterwards withdrawn by him from that section, it remained 

 there long enough to gain the very inappropriate English 

 name of " Rufous Sedge-Warbler." In dropping the second 

 word of this title, the Editor has to remark that it is not the 

 *' Rufous Warbler " of Latham ; but, that term having been 

 long disused, and custom rather than priority guiding us in 

 the choice of vernacular names, the change here made may, 

 it is hoped, be thought for the better. Further, it is quite 

 impossible to keep this bird among the aquatic Warblers, 



• In the absence of any other mode of accounting for this curious peculiarity, 

 a conjecture may, perhaps, be hazarded. The Canon states with refei-ence to 

 this very species that, both in Palestine and in Algeria, he and his friends found 

 the green lizards "provoking rivals in egg-collecting." Now if the bird thus 

 suflers from the depredations of these reptiles it may use the snake's slough as a 

 means of repelling them ; for undoubtedly snakes often prey upon liznrds, and 

 the presence of the cast cuticle might well induce in the latter a belief tliat 

 their enemy was lurking at hand — his vigour refreshed and his appetite shar(iened 

 by the moult he liad just undergone. 



1 



