VOL. XV.] BREEDING-HABITS OF MERLIN. 127 



make this statement clearer. A patch of old ling on Cracoe 

 Fell held in 1898 a Merlin's nest and eggs, both owners of 

 which were trapped and killed and the eggs destroyed. 

 The year following another pair nested on the same spot, 

 both birds again being killed and the eggs taken. Eighteen 

 years later this patch of heather was burned, but during the 

 nineteen years that elapsed from the trapping of the first 

 pair to the time of the burning, nineteen pairs of Merlins 

 were killed, one pair each year without a miss and not a 

 single egg was hatched. Yet there were a score of other 



Merlin : Fig. 2. A typical " Merlin boulder." 

 (Photographed by W. Rowan.) 



sites on the moor that the newcomers might have chosen. 

 In another instance, during the same period, a pair of Merlins 

 was trapped on an old bed of ling for each of twelve successive 

 years, not a single bird escaping and not an egg hatching. 

 The heather was then fired. Thus for twelve years these 

 two sites attracted each a pair of Merlins out of an annual 

 average of three or four breeding pairs on the whole moor. 

 That they offered some special attraction there can be no 

 doubt, but exactly what it may have been is not clear. The 

 only certain factor is that the old bed of heather was not 

 the attraction, for in one of these two cases bracken has 

 now appeared in the place of the ling, and Merlins have 



