344 BRITISH BIRDS. 



appears to be a late breeder, and is scarcely likely to have more than one brood 

 in the year. On the 21st of May, two years ago, Swaysland sent me up two 

 nests of this bird, one containing six and the other five eggs. At the same 

 time he informed me of a third nest which then contained only two eggs. 

 On the 28th I went down to Brighton to see it. About half a mile from 

 Hassock's Gate station is a small plantation. Most of the elms had then 

 been cut down, leaving an underwood of nut-trees interspersed with small 

 shrubs of various kinds and tangled vegetation of all sorts. Beyond the 

 wood we looked over a farm onto the downs, behind which was the sea. 

 The nest was about fifty yards from the gamekeeper's cottage, in the middle 

 of the plantation, and was so admirably concealed that, standing over the 

 clump of grass in which it was placed, which was not more than about two 

 feet high, and was mixed with a few wild-rose briars, we could not trace the 

 slightest appearance of any thing of the kind, and only caught a momentary 

 glimpse of the bird as she glided away from the clump. The nest was 

 placed in the centre of a bunch of long coarse grass, which raised it perhaps 

 six inches above the actual level of the ground. It was round, compact, and 

 rather deep, the outside woven principally of green moss mixed with a few 

 dead leaves and a little dry grass. The lining was entirely dry, slender, 

 round grass-stalks. It contained six eggs. We arranged the grass so that 

 we could just see the nest, and left the place, returning again in about ten 

 minutes. In order to get a better sight of the bird, we approached the 

 nest from different sides, and saw her slip off and glide like a mouse through 

 the grass, until she came very near one of us, when she took wing for about 

 a yard, flying with depressed outspread tail, and again took to the grass. 

 A quarter of an hour afterwards we again stole cautiously to the place, and 

 saw her on the nest. On our still nearer approach she slipped off the eggs 

 and ran about at our feet, threading her way in a zigzag course through 

 the grass exactly like a mouse. We never heard her utter a note ; but, 

 according to Naumann, the call-note of the Grasshopper Warbler must be 

 a tic, tic, something like the sound produced by knocking two stones 

 together. In another wood, where the elms were still standing, the game- 

 keeper showed us the place where one of the other nests had been. It was 

 in a slightly open part of the wood, in a similar clump of grass and rose- 

 briars. 



The ground-colour of the eggs of this bird is a pale pinkish white, gene- 

 rally profusely spotted all over with small rufous-brown spots or dots 

 interspersed with paler and greyer underlying spots of the same character. 

 In most eggs the spots are slightly larger towards the large end of the 

 egg, and sometimes very decidedly so. Occasionally the overlying spots 

 are sparsely distributed, and in some instances they are almost absent 

 altogether. Not unfrequently irregular short and thin hair-lines of very 

 dark rufous-brown are observable. The eggs vary in length from '75 to 



