1gO GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 
early in eastern Ontario as the following records shows: On August 
Ist, 1896, I saw young ones near Graham lake, Leeds county, Ont., 
on June 25th, 1899, I saw a single bird rise from a ditch at Lans- 
downe, Ont., also two others near Lansdowne in June. In 1904, 
on the 24th August, I saw six of these birds, four young ones and 
the two old ones, about a mile north of Madoc, Ont. They rose 
from a muddy pool by the roadside and all alighted on the fence 
rail. They continued about the same place for more than a fort- 
night, and I felt satisfied had been hatched near by. (Rev. C. /. 
Young.) 
The uncertainty that has existed for so long concerning the nest- 
ing of the solitary sandpiper seems to have been at last dispelled 
chiefly through the work of Mr. Walter Raine and his collectors. 
In Volume XVIII, pp. 135-138 of The Ottawa Naturalist, he describes 
at length the taking of the first three clutches of the eggs of this 
bird. The following is his description of the nests and eggs. 
Set. 1—Taken in northern Alberta, June 16th, 1903; four eggs 
advanced in incubation; collector, Evan Thomson. This set was 
found in an old nest of the American robin, built 15 feet up in a 
tamarack tree, that was growing in the middle of a large muskeg 
dotted with tamaracks; the bird was flushed off the nest but unfor- 
tunately not secured. The eggs are exceedingly handsome and 
very different from the eggs of any other American sandpiper. 
The ground colour is pale greenish-white, heavily blotched and 
spotted, chiefly at the larger ends, with vandyke brown, chestnut 
brown and purplish grey; the average size of these four eggs is 
1.36 x.98, and they are very large for the size of the bird. Set II— 
Northern Alberta, June 9th, 1904; four eggs found in the nest of 
a bronzed grackle, built in a low tree; these eggs were unfortunately 
lost owing to Mr. Thompson first blowing them and then leaving 
the shells in the nest until he returned with his gun to secure the 
parent bird, but on his return on the following day, no trace of 
of the eggs was to be found, the bird evidently had carried them 
away. Set IJI]—Northern Alberta, June 24th, 1904; four eggs 
found in the nest of a cedar wax-wing, which was built in a smal 
spruce tree growing in a swamp, the nest being about five feet from, 
the water, and Mr. Thompson was fortunate in shooting the parent 
bird as she flew from the nest, and thus identification is very com- 
plete, and established the fact once for all that the solitary sand- 
