356 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 
B.C., to Tatchun river, lat. 62° 20’, near Rink rapids, Yukon river. 
The specimens were slightly darker than virginianus from the east. 
(Bishop.) 
BREEDING NoTES.—A common summer resident, though it does 
not appear to be as common as it was fifteen years ago. It lays 
its two eggs, without any nest, on rocks, in a disused stone quarry, 
or even on land that has recently been burnt over. (Rev. C. J. 
Young.) All the nests taken at Ottawa, Ont., were on the ground 
or on the gravel on the flat roofs of houses in the city. Eggs, two, 
of a pale olive buff, thickly mottled and daubed with varied tints of 
darker gray slate or even blackish. (G. R. White.) On August rst, 
1883, while in the eastern sand-hills with Miller Christy, we found 
the two young of a nighthawk sitting on the bare ground in the 
open. They seemed about three days old. On the tips of their 
beaks were still the hard white points with which they are furnished 
to aid them in chipping the shell. The old shells were lying around 
the nest, as is the case with the Poocetes, and but for these I should 
have passed by the young ones, as they had squatted close to the 
ground and shut their eyes, for the blackness and brilliancy of 
these would almost certainly have betrayed them. I gently touched 
one of them, whereupon it crouched down more closely to the ground ; 
but its companion, rising up, hissed with open beak and snapped 
savagely at my fingers. On being further teased they ran off, 
exactly in the manner of young ducks, with outstretched wings 
and with neck and body at an angle of 45 degrees. After running 
a few feet they stopped, squatted as before, and closed their eyes. 
This they repeated several times, but at best they only made little 
progress, and each time on being overtaken the bold one was always 
ready to fight. This proved to be a male; the sex of the other 
was not ascertained, but probably it was a female. At this age 
the middle claw is not pectinated. (FE. T. Seton.) The eggs of 
the nighthawk (Chordeiles virginianus) were several times found 
on the bare ground among the sand-hills, on the north side of the 
Souris, near Plum creek, with no approach to a nest for the help- 
less young. The parent birds endeavoured to draw us away from 
their eggs, fluttered as if wounded a short distance from them, and 
uttering cries of distress. (Hind.) In The Ottawa Naturalist, 
Vol. XIX., pp. 56, 57 the Rev. G. Eifrig published a very complete 
account of the breeding of nighthawks on a flat roof in Ottawa. 
