JULY, 1881. 25 



endeavouring to preserve the said eggs next morning he 

 would have felt amply satisfied. Not only were the eggs 

 full of young birds, but they were rotten into the bargain, 

 and it required a powerful return of our boyish enthusiasm 

 to enable us to finish our task. The whole weight of the 

 nest and five eggs was a fraction over one half ounce. 



While exhibiting this nest and desiring local informa- 

 tion, we found few who were acquainted with either nest 

 or eggs ; but a friend in pur own neighbourhood took us 

 scrambling over a hedge, and through tangled vegetation 

 heavy with rain drops, to a large fuschia bush. Here an 

 empty nest was clearly of the same character, but from 

 its extra size it seemed to us to belong to the whitethroat 

 itself C. Cinerea, a much more common bird than the 

 lesser, and well-known to many school-boys as the nettle- 

 creeper, from frequenting beds of nettles. In a 

 lengthened bird-nesting experience we do not recollect 

 to have met the nest of this bird, the lesser whitethroat, 

 before. 



There must surely be fish in plenty in Loch Linnhe, 

 for the whales have been active of late. One went 

 ashore at the bay near Dunstaffnage, and was killed most 

 ignobly by means of pitchforks ; and another coolly went 

 away with the bag net for salmon from Kingairlochside, 

 the net being discovered some four or five miles off, with 

 four or five grilse and a salmon in it. Had it been loose 

 it might have strangled Mr. Whale, but being fixed it en- 

 abled the animal to tear it clear away, and split it up. 

 Clearly it was not after salmon, a fish even the bottle- 

 nose does not apparently hanker after in the presence of 

 herring, if, indeed, they could eat them at all, which is 

 more than questionable. They must have been led 



