702 The Zoologist — Apkil, 1867. 



Common Mole.— One of the animal-preservers here told me that he had brought to 

 him, the summer before last, a cream-coloured variety of the mole. He says that its 

 eyes were pinkish in colour, and that it was a very pretty specimen. — A. Clark- 

 Kennedg, February 12, 1867. 



Perfect Mastodon Skeleton. — One of the largest and most perfect mastodons known 

 has recently been discovered in digging the foundation for a mill at Cohoes, near 

 Troy, in the United States. It was found eighty-three feet below the surface of the 

 gruuiul, and in so perfect a condition that it is believed that the skeleton can be 

 restored entire. The animal must have been at least twenty feet in length and fifteen 

 in height. The tusks measure eight feet, and the jaw is four feet nine inches in length 

 from the mouth to the cranium. The remains have been carefully collected, and it is 

 staled that Prof. Agassi2 will draw up a report on them. 



Nesting of the Peregrine Falcon. — In your ' Birdsnesting' you say, at p. 6, as to 

 the situation of the peregrine's nest, " Sea cliffs all round our coast." This is quite 

 correct so far as it goes, but curiously enough, in the only instances in which I have 

 procured the eggs myself, the nests have been built in mountain cliffs far from the sea. 

 In 1807 I took a peregrine's nest with three eggs, in the middle of May, from a moun- 

 tain craig, some three miles from Gargunnoch, in Stirlingshire. The old birds having 

 been killed by a keeper on the 27th of April, and brought to a birdstuffer in Stirling, 

 induced me to seek for their nest. I understand that since then another pair of 

 peregrines have occupied the same breeding-place. In Aloa Craig, just above the 

 village of Aloa, in Clackmannan, a pair of peregrines nest nearly every year, although 

 frequently robbed. — W. II. Feilden ; Feniscowles Hall, Blackburn, Lancashire, 

 March 5, 1867. [Such criticisms asnhis are always acceptable: it is very agreeable 

 when omissions call forth additional information. — E. N.~\ 



Orangelegged Hobby near Aberdeen. — A female of this species was shot near Rotbie- 

 may about four years ago, and preserved by Mr. Mitchell, and a male was shot 

 in the month of July last year, within six miles of Aberdeeu, while in the act of 

 stealing the last of a brood of chickens. The reason why this species has not been 

 ofteuer observed is, doubtless, owing to its being confounded with other species which 

 it resembles. — Aberdeen Free Press. 



Kestrels breeding in Confinement.— In one of your late impressions a correspondent 

 wished to kuow if the sparrowhawk ever bred in confinement. Now I cannot recall 

 an instauce of that species having done so, but can relate an interesting case con- 

 cerning the kestrel, which came under my own notice only last summer. On calling 

 at the shop of Mr. Rogers, naturalist, Plymouth, I was asked into the aviary, con- 

 taining live birds of many kinds, and on observing a female kestrel crouched in the 

 corner of a cage not five feet long by about three feet high, and not two feet broad 

 (with her feathers ruffled and her wings partially spread, as if pluming her prey), asked 

 what it meant, and was told she had been sitting on five egg<, had just hatched one 

 young one, and that the male, which was on a perch close by, had regularly taken his 

 turn on the nest. Of course, feeling interested, I called again in about a week, and 

 found that the whole five had been hatched, one on every alternate day ; but, strange 

 to say, directly after the second chick was produced, she killed and ale the first, and 

 after the third she ate the second, and so on to the fourth, allowing each to live one 



