COMPOSITION OF ITS NEST. 333 



quented for a succession of years, a great mass is at length formed ; 

 while others believe that they are deposited by the parents as a plat- 

 form for the eggs, constituting, in fact, a nest ; in which latter view I 

 fully concur, and the following are my reasons for so doing : 



"Oil the 18th of the past month of April, during one of my fishing 

 excursions on the Thames, I saw a hole in a precipitous bank, which 

 I felt sure was a nesting-place of the Kingfisher, and on passing a 

 spare top of my fly-rod to the extremity of the hole, a distance of 

 nearly three feet, I brought out some freshly-cast bones of fish, con- 

 vincing me that I was right in my surmise. On a subsequent day, the 

 9th of May, I again visited the spot with a spade, and after moving 

 nearly two feet square of the turf dug down to the nest without dis- 

 turbing the entrance-hole or the passage which led to it. Here I found 

 four eggs placed on the usual layers of fish-bones ; all of these I re- 

 moved with care, and then filled up the hole, beating the earth down 

 as hard as the bank itself, and replacing the sod on the top in order that 

 barge-horses passing to and fro might not put a foot in the hole. A 

 fortnight afterward the bird was seen to leave the hole again, and my 

 suspicion was awakened that she had taken to her old breeding-quarters 

 a second time. 



"The first opportunity I had of again visiting this place, which was 

 exactly twenty-one days from the date of my former exploration and 

 taking the eggs, I again passed the top of my fly-rod up the hole, and 

 found not only that the hole was of the former length, but that the 

 female was within. I then took a large mass of cotton-wool from my 

 collecting-box and stuflfed it to the extremity of the hole, in order to 

 preserve the eggs and nest from damage during my again laying it open 

 from above. On removing the sod and digging down as before, I came 

 upon the cotton-wool, and beneath it a well-formed nest of fish-bones, 

 the size of a small saucer, the walls of which were fully half an inch 

 thick, together with eight beautiful eggs and the old female herself. 

 This nest and eggs I removed with the greatest care, and I now have 

 the pleasure of exhibiting it to the society before its transmission to the 

 British Museum, the proper resting-place of so interesting a bird's nest. 

 This mass of bones, then, weighing seven hundred grains, had been cast 

 up and deposited by the bird, or the bird and its mate, besides the un- 

 usual number of eight eggs, in the short space of twenty-one days. 



"To gain anything like an approximate idea of the number of fish 

 that had been taken to form this mass, the skeleton of a minnow, their 

 usual food, must be carefully made and weighed, and this I may prob- 

 ably do upon some future occasion. I think we may now conclude, 

 from what I have adduced, that the bird purposely deposits these bones 

 as a nest ; and nothing can be better adapted, as a platform, to defenrl 

 the eggs from the damp earth." 



