828 The Zoologist — July, 1867. 



are not to be caught, it is obliged to do without bones. From many years' constant 

 watching, I can exactly tell the probable position of the hole, and the day it will be 

 begun. Accordingly, on Thursday, March 29, 1 sent two witnesses to a particular spot 

 on the river Ouse, S. Neots, Huntingdonshire. They observed that there was on that 

 day positively no hole of any kind, or vestige of a hole, in that bank. On Easter 

 Monday, April 2, I sent a keeper to the place. He reported the hole as begun. On 

 the same day I went in a boat, and, putting a reed up, found it by actual measurement 

 about fifteen inches deep, the moulds being quite fresh outside. Droppings of the 

 bird (which was now seen constantly leaving the hole) were visible in two places. 

 There was also a shallow hole a little to the left of the one above-mentioned. This 

 was a failure— either from caprice or some other cause, abandoned. We observe the 

 same in woodpeckers, which will sometimes bore in three or four places before they get 

 one to their liking — a circumstance I particularly remarked in a pair of the greater 

 spotted woodpeckers (P. major) last spriug. Between March 29 and April 2 the king- 

 fisher had made two holes. I thought it best now to leave the place, only receiving 

 from the keeper each morning a report, as he weut by in his boat, that the bird was 

 going on. Saturday, April 7. — I made a memorandum, " I again observe fresh 

 moulds, but not as we consider to-day's, but yesterday's ; hence, I suppose the hole to 

 be nearly finished, if not quite." Here I should say, after taking these ncsls 

 constantly for nearly thirty years, I find twenty-one days is the correct time from the 

 commencement of the excavatiou to the end of laying seven eggs. I never had the 

 luck to find eight; Mr. Gould, however, iuforms me he once did. Saturday, April 

 21. — "Opened the hole, situated in the perpendicular bank, to keep off water-rats. 

 Found, by measurement, the entrance was twelve inches from the surface of the ground, 

 and about five feet from the water. The length of the ascending gallery was eight and 

 a half inches, and the oval chamber six inches in diameter more. The top of the 

 cbamber was nine inches from the surface of the ground. It contained the usual nest 

 of fish-bones, which was one and a half inch deep; and the same with the seven 

 fresh eggs are now before me, with two other nests from the same locality. The bird 

 flew off after the first dig, which I commonly make so as to cover up the hole again 

 without disturbance, if the full number of eggs has not been laid. There was no 

 excrement in the chamber, but much just outside in the gallery. The size of the 

 chamber is just sufficient for the owners to turn round pleasantly. When the young 

 birds (which I have seen in every stage) have been some time in the nest, of course the 

 hole gets very foul. Here, then, is a case capable of being attested by two or three 

 witnesses, step by step, and concerning which there can be no doubt, where the king- 

 fisher is proved to have made its own hole. I have known it, when driven from one 

 bank by floods, to revert to an old hole of its own making in a previous year ; but never 

 has there been an instance of its taking up with the abode of its most deadly enemy, 

 the water-rat. It is hard to prove a negative, but it is certainly a most unlikely thing 

 for a kingfisher to enter a rat-hole. No one who has seen the eggs of this species in 

 situ as often as I have can deny that the fish-bones are placed with the design of 

 making a nest. — George Dawson Rowley; Brighton. — From ike ' Field'' Newspaper. 



Colouring of Cuckoo's Eggs.— la the ' Wiltshire Natural History Magazine ' for 

 January appears the following statement in reference to the colouring of cuckoo's 

 eggs: — "That tbe cuckoo, laying her eggs in the nests of other birds, is able to 

 assimilate them in colour to the eggs of those birds whose nests she selects; that a 



