Birds. 9243 
shaped and coloured precisely like an ordinary specimen; the dis- 
covery that it contained no yolk at once destroyed all my speculations 
as to the probability of some rare species of gull having taken a fancy 
to breeding in our cliffs. A rather common variety of the herring 
gull’s egg is of a pale bluish green, with a few scattered spots of pale 
neutral tint. 
Redbreasted Merganser.—Redbreasted mergansers are now to be 
seen in pairs upon various parts of the coast. Although they often 
lay among long grass they seem to prefer the shelter of a roof of some 
kind, and thus it is that the eggs are most commonly found under 
rocks, in rabbit-burrows, and even in crevices of old walls, but what- 
ever be the situation chosen the nest almost always consists of a 
hollow scraped in the ground, and lined to a greater or less extent 
with down, feathers and dead plants, the amount of material being 
increased as incubation proceeds. Sometimes it happens that no 
attempt is made to line the nest until after the first few eggs have 
been deposited. 
Henry L. Saxsy. 
Baltasound, Shetland, June 30, 1864. 
Remarks on the Birds seen during a Visit to Flamborough, in the 
last Fortnight of July, 1864. By Joan Corpgaux, Esq. 
HavIne just returned from an ornithological excursion to Flam- 
borough, a few remarks on the present state of this once famous 
breeding-place, and on the birds still to be found there, may be 
interesting to the readers of the ‘ Zoologist.’ 
Many thousands of guillemots, razorbills, puffins and kittiwake gulls 
still frequent these magnificent chalk cliffs for the purposes of incuba- 
tion. The numbers, however, have of late years been greatly on the 
decrease. This circumstance, much to be regretted by all true orni- 
thologists, is owing to two causes; one, the plunder of the eggs during 
the spring by the neighbouring villagers, and the other, the wanton 
and wholesale destruction of the birds themselves by the visitors who 
frequent the neighbourhood during the summer months. Formerly 
two old men seem to have had almost the monopoly of this dangerous 
kind of birdsnesting. Now, I am told, there are as many as twelve 
“ cliff-climbers” who gain a part livelihood by plundering the nests of 
the sea-fow], and selling the eggs as an article of consumption. Since 
the railway has been opened along the East Coast, through Brid- 
lington and Filey, hundreds of persons are brought down by “cheap 
