222 Zoological Society :— 
of trees are very frequent; and with the Ducks of the genus diz 
this seems to be the normal mode of nidification. But, excepting in 
the last case, this peculiarity in the selection of a site for the nest 
seems to result from the particular fancy (or instinct, it may be) of 
the individual; and in that exceptional case the general habits of 
the birds are so essentially arboreal that we need not wonder at the 
fact of their using trees for their nurseries as well as for their usual 
places of lodging. The only instances parallel to the one I am going 
to adduce are, so far as I can call to mind, those of the Golden-eye 
(Clangula Glaucion), the Goosander (Mergus Serrator), and the 
Smew (Mergus Albellus). Each of these three birds departs from 
the manner of nidification which obtains among its brethren, just as 
I shall show that the Green Sandpiper (Helodromas ochropus*+) 
does. 
Though I do not pretend to lay before you any novel facts this 
evening, yet it will be, I think, admitted that hitherto we have had 
in England but little positive information on the mode of breeding 
of the Green Sandpiper; such as it is, however, I will proceed to 
notice it. First, I must say that I think the story of the nest of 
this bird “by the side of a clay-pit’? in Norfolk, as told in Mr. 
Yarrell’s ‘ British Birds’ (vol. 11. p. 529) and in Mr. Lubbock’s 
‘Fauna of Norfolk’ (p. 75), can hardly be relied on—not, of course, 
that there is the slightest reason to doubt the implicit good faith of 
Sir Thomas Beevor, on whose authority it appears to rest. Next 
there is the statement contributed to the last edition of Mr. Hewit- 
son’s ‘Eggs of British Birds’ (ed. 3. vol. ii. p. 334*) by Mr. 
Tristram, to the effect that he found the species breeding near slug- 
gish streams or mountain tarns between Bodo and Quickjock in 
Lapland. Now this particular district has since been visited by three 
other excellent observers, to no one of whom did the Green Sandpiper 
reveal itself. I therefore hope I may be pardoned for suggesting 
the possibility of a mistake in my friend’s assertion. 
In the ‘ Naumannia’ for 1851 (vol. 1. part 2, p. 50), Herr Passler 
mentions that he had, through his friend the Oberforster Wiese, 
obtained an ege of Totanus glareola, with the remark that this spe- 
cies of Sandpiper always “nests upon a tree; but in the same 
periodical for 1852 (vol. ii. part 1, p. 95) he states that Baron von 
Homeyer had informed him that the egg in question was not that of 
T. glareola, but of T. ochropus, and adds that during his stay at 
Haff he had seen many nesting-places of this latter species; they 
were on the borders of ‘‘ Hlsenbriiche’’ [quere, swamps of the Ser- 
vice-tree (Pyrus domestica)?], in the middle of the forest, where the 
trees stand upon hillocks. In the ‘Journal fiir Ornithologie’ for 
1855 (vol. iti. p. 514), the above-mentioned Herr Wiese, writing on 
the Ornithology of Pomerania, especially in the district of Céslin, 
says that he had first heard from an old sportsman, who knew the 
peculiarities of all the forest-animals, that the Totanus ochropus 
+ The osteology of the T'ringa ochropus, Linn., presents such a marked devia- 
tion from that of the other Zofani which I have examined, that I do not hesitate 
in this case to follow Dr. Kaup in considering it the type of a distinct genus. 
