THE ZooLoGist—JUNE, 1875. 4497 
harrier, beating the heaths in regular lines, and, as far as I observed, never 
settles upon trees, but often upon any mound or elevation, and whilst 
hunting, flies just over the tops of the heather, with an occasional rise into 
the air as if chasing some insect, and in its whole demeanour it seems to 
be less fearless of man than do many others of the birds of prey. I visited 
the same locality several evenings, and occasionally saw two if not three 
pairs of birds, often a long way off, and although I was quite unsuccessful 
in detecting their nest, I had hoped they were breeding somewhere near, and 
that their life would be spared, but in this I was most grievously deceived, 
for about the middle of May a gamekeeper trapped two pairs of them, and 
I did not see the others afterwards,—possibly they met with a similar fate in 
some other direction. I had, however, the satisfaction of inspecting as well 
as dissecting one of the pairs, which were two beautiful birds. At first 
sight the female appeared to be much the larger of the two, but the disparity 
was not so much in measurement as in weight and general appearance. 
The spread of wing of each was three feet seven inches, and length of the 
tail nine inches. The female was rather superior in length from head to 
tail, measuring eighteen inches and a half, whilst the male was only half an 
inch less. In bulk of body, however, the two birds materially differed, for 
whilst the male weighed but nine and a half ounces, his “ better half” 
weighed just over fourteen ounces. The gamekeeper told me that they 
were very destructive to young rabbits and young woodcocks, and that he 
had picked up eight or ten of the latter which had been killed and partly 
eaten by the pair the same morning as he trapped them,—in fact, that one of 
the woodcocks had been used asa bait for the trap in which they were 
caught : such information, however, could not have been altogether reliable ; 
he might have found the remains of the woodcocks, but the pair of harriers 
I dissected had decidedly not breakfasted upon them, as there was nothing 
in the stomach of the male, and but very littlke—apparently only the 
remains of a beetle—in that of the female. The female was either laying 
or about to lay at the time of her capture, as I took an almost mature egg 
from her; and as I could find no other in a further dissection, I supposed 
she had laid two or three before, and that this would have been the last, yet 
I have not heard that a nest was anywhere found last season. The man 
who caught these birds considered they were valuable harriers, and took a 
pair of them to a dealer, with the expectation of getting a good round sum 
in return, but the dealer told him they were ash-coloured falcons, and con- 
sequently worth but very little, and so he obtained them for a mere trifle, 
thus turning to account—in not altogether a creditable manner—the 
different names which this species has had applied to it. I am well aware 
of the marked variation which often exists between the Falconide in their 
various stages of growth from nestlings to maturity, so I would not speak 
positively of the occurrence of the variety of this species—the Circus ater of 
