J34 FALCONID^E. 



white or very slightly tinged with bluish-green, and occa- 

 sionally marked with a few spots of yellowish-brown. They 

 measure from 2-05 to 1-63 by from 1'56 to 1/32 in. The 

 male is said to assist in the process of incubation, and has 

 been shot on the nest. The young are hatched early in June, 

 and are at first covered with white down. 



The Hen-Harrier, though formerly numerous in the fenny 

 district known as the Great Bedford Level, was probably never 

 a very common bird in England. Owing perhaps to its greater 

 adaptability to circumstances it was however more generally 

 distributed in the breeding- season than the preceding species, 

 and, even a few years since, the information gathered by 

 Mr. More shews that it then continued to breed regularly in 

 several English counties Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Glou- 

 cestershire, Monmouthshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Durham 

 and Cumberland, as well as in both North and South Wales. 

 Occasionally too, nests were then found in Hampshire, Sussex, 

 Kent, Norfolk (in which county four fledglings were taken in 

 July, 1870), Shropshire and Northumberland ; but it had 

 ceased to breed in Wiltshire, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hun- 

 tingdonshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire, though 

 in some of these only very recently. In Scotland the same dili- 

 gent collector of facts ascertained that it yet bred regularly in the 

 counties of Wigton, Lanark, Selkirk, Haddington and Stirling, 

 in nearly all the Highland shires, the Hebrides and Orkneys, 

 and occasionally in the Shetlands. Mr. Eobert Gray states 

 that it is a very common species on all the Hebrides, where it 

 is known by a Gaelic name signifying " Mouse-Hawk." In 

 Ireland, according to Thompson, it is pretty generally dis- 

 tributed over the island, and its nest has been found in various 

 suitable localities; but, in Mr. Watters's opinion, it is of 

 considerable rarity in the eastern portion, though he has 

 known it to breed on the Wicklow mountains. 



On the continent of Europe this species is very generally 

 distributed. In Norway, according to Herr Collett, though 

 it is said to occur so far to the north as East Finmark, a 

 single nest only has been known and that in Hedemark. 

 Wolley found it breeding in Lapland considerably beyond 



