114 ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



endeavours to discover the whereabouts, and, if 

 possible, to secure a specimen of one or other of the 

 same. Surveying and reconnoitring the ground, I 

 singled out a limited extent of country, and beat it 

 steadily to an inch, as though it contained but a single 

 living animal. If stiff knee-deep heather, then my 

 progress was slow, as I cautiously raised every likely 

 tuft with my foot or the muzzle of my gun, or peered 

 within its mossy depths with curious suspicion. 



I had not proceeded far before a very unusual note 

 higher up the hill smote my ear, and, in a few more 

 steps, the bird rose and fell to my shot, a fine snipe in 

 rich summer plumage. In about a quarter of an hour 

 later I came upon the fragments of the egg-shells of 

 the common wild cluck, and, stooping down, I found 

 the nest rifled and torn, doubtless by those villainous 

 and unsparing robbers, the corbies or hooded crows. 

 Some time afterwards, amid the interstices of the dry 

 moss upon a little hillock, I discovered the bleached 

 skulls of the young of the shorteared owl (Strix 

 Imchyotus). In another spot, well concealed by dense 

 vegetation, an old last-year's nest still existed, but I 

 nm unable to state to what bird it could have belonged. 

 Quantities of the large, hairy caterpillar (Caja) 

 appeared in all directions upon the ground foliage, no 

 doubt simultaneously brought into existence by a recent 

 warm change. I sprang another snipe out of distance, 

 and then continued carefully on, quartering the ground 



