3626 The Zoologist— August, 1873. 



sparrow, and a greenfinch's in that of another hedgesparrow ; 

 a greenfinch's egg in the nest of a chaffinch ; and a hedgesparrow's 

 egg in the nest of a chaffinch, and also one in the nest of a green- 

 finch. In all these cases, except the last, the exchange was 

 perfectly successful ; in the last case the nest had been found and 

 taken by some one the morning after I had placed the strange egg 

 in it. By successful I do not raean that the strange egg was 

 always hatched, but that the parent bird continued sitting on her 

 own eggs and the strange one quite as well as if nothing had 

 happened; though this is exactly what I should have expected 

 in every case, for I do not think birds are particularly careful 

 about the colour of the egg on which they sit. I think it right to 

 mention that in many cases I placed the strange egg in the nest 

 soon after the bird had begun to sit, but in some cases before, one 

 or two eggs being laid after I had inserted the stranger. 



Swift. — On the 6th I first saw the swift. 



Landrail. — On the 8th, at the Museum at Taunton, I saw A 

 landrail, which had been killed by flying against the telegraph- 

 wires. On the 13th another landrail was brought to me by the 

 porter at our Bishop's Lydeard station, who said he had picked it 

 up dead under the telegraph-wires. This bird seems to be rather 

 stupid, as I have several limes heard of its being picked up in a 

 similar manner in other years. 



Birds near Weston-super-Mare. — On the 14lh I was on a visit 

 to Wcston-super-INIare, and took a long walk along the coast and 

 out to the end of a steep grassy promontory, Bream Down, where 

 1 thought it possible I might find some herring or common gulls 

 breeding, but with the exception of four or five herring gulls, which 

 1 saw on the mud, and none of which had acquired adult plumage, 

 I did not see a single gull of any sort. Indeed I do not think that 

 either the common or herring gull now breed on any part of our 

 Somerset coast, for last year I Was at Weston about the same time 

 and explored the coast for some way on both sides of that place, 

 but though I saw several burrow ducks evidently paired, I saw no 

 gulls; and the year before I had occasion to go from llfracombe 

 to Bristol and back during the middle of the breeding season : 

 this took me, of course, along the whole of our coast, and had the 

 gulls any breeding-station there I must have seen it. The same 

 year I rode close along the coast from Danster to Culbone and 

 back, with the same result as to seeing gulls breeding; indeed this 



