436 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
within our knowledge nowhere so numerously as in Tarnaway. Without 
any search, and merely in the accidental occasions of roe-hunting, we have 
found, in one season, nineteen nests with eggs. It would, however, be 
more proper to say ‘beds,’ rather than ‘nests’; for, like those of the 
Plover, they are merely slight hollows formed by the nestling of the bird’s 
breast in dry soft spots, or on the fallen leaves. They generally lay three 
eggs, sometimes four, and occasionally, but rarely, five, and never that 
we have known beyond that number. The eggs are surprisingly large in 
proportion to the bird, and of a brown colour, variegated, like the young, 
with beautiful clouded tints. Like all the larger ground-birds, they run as 
soon as they are hatched, which is early in the spring; and in May I found 
a brood of five, so large that I could only catch the smallest, and that with 
difficulty. As the nests are laid on dry ground, and often at a distance 
from moisture, in the latter case, as soon as the young are hatched, the old 
bird will sometimes carry them in her claws to the nearest spring or green 
stripe. In the same manner, when in danger, she will rescue those which 
she can lift. Of this we have had frequent opportunities for observation in 
Tarnaway. Various times, when the hounds, in beating the ground, have 
come upon a brood, we have seen the old bird rise with a young one in her 
claws, and carry it fifty or a hundred yards away; and, if followed to the 
place where she pitched, she has repeated the transportation until too 
much harassed. In any sudden alarm she will act in the same way. One 
morning I had been sitting for some time on the grey stone of the ‘ Braigh- 
clach-liath,’ ruminating with my eye fixed unconsciously on the ground, at 
the dry leafy foot of a cluster of those tall slender birehes which, at that 
time, formed one of the most beautiful features of the terrace: as my 
thoughts became less intense, and the mind had exhausted its action upon 
the subject by which it had been abstracted, the eye grew more sensible, 
and I was aware of another large black eye which was fixed upon mine from 
the bed of brown leaves before me. I could distinguish no form, no colour 
distinct from them: in fact, the leaves seemed to look at me. I approached 
nearer and nearer, but could discover nothing but the large, round, dark eye 
fixed intently upon mine. I was at a loss what to think: if the eye closed, 
I felt that there would be nothing left to prove that what I then saw was 
one of the clearest and most intelligent eyes I had ever beheld, when 
suddenly the little, round, light-brown head of a young Woodcock peeped 
out from what now became visible as the back of its mother, whose eye it 
was which had caused me so much astonishment. The little head dis- 
appeared again, and immediately afterwards the diminutive bird came out 
from the feathers of the old one’s breast, bearing half its shell upon its 
back, and uttering that plaintive cry for which language has no sign. 
I retreated softly to my stone, but trod upon a long dead branch which lay 
concealed under the moss, and the extremity stirring the leaves and dry 
