BRITISH FERTILITY 189 



from beneath; gulls, gannets, cormorants, and solan 

 geese prey upon them from above; while the fisher- 

 men from a vast fleet of boats scoop them up by 

 the million. The birds plunge and scream, the 

 men shout and labor, the sea is covered with broken 

 and wounded fish, the shore exhales the odor of the 

 decaying offal, which also attracts the birds and 

 the vermin ; and, altogether, the scene is thoroughly 

 European. Yet the herring supply does not fail; 

 and when the shoals go into the lochs, the people 

 say they contain two parts fish to one of water. 



One of the most significant facts I observed while 

 in England and Scotland was the number of eggs in 

 the birds' -nests. The first nest I saw, which was 

 that of the meadow pipit, held six eggs; the sec- 

 ond, which was that of the willow warbler, con- 

 tained seven. Are these British birds, then, I 

 said, like the people, really more prolific than our 

 own? Such is, undoubtedly, the fact. The nests 

 I had observed were not exceptional; and when a 

 boy told me he knew of a wren's nest with twenty- 

 six eggs in it, I was half inclined to believe him. 

 The common British wren, which is nearly identi- 

 cal with our winter wren, often does lay upward of 

 twenty eggs, while ours lays five or six. The long- 

 tailed titmouse lays from ten to twelve eggs; the 

 marsh tit, from eight to ten; the great tit, from six 

 to nine ; the blue-bonnet, from six to eighteen ; the 

 wryneck, often as many as ten ; the nuthatch, seven ; 

 the brown creeper, nine; the kinglet, eight; the 

 robin, seven ; the flycatcher, eight ; and so on, — all, 



