4936 TuE ZooLocist—JuNE, 1876. 
Returning homeward by the Lighthouse Island and another 
lower and more abounding in soil and slight vegetation, I found 
that the terns, in the earlier part of the day, had most obligingly 
commenced laying, so that I was able to find numerous deposits of 
single eggs by the arctic and common terns: others of the Sand- 
wich tern, in very beautiful varieties, 1 had obtained of the keeper. 
No doubt other species breed upon the more distant and less- 
visited islets.* Large and small, all at this season swarm with 
bird-breeders, and, if life and health permit, this peep at them will 
certainly not be the last that I shall obtain. Where craggy and bare, 
the scene forcibly recalled the glorious days of boyhood at Flam- 
borough, where the deeply-indented cliff-line was all alive with 
millions of sea-fowl, before the railway had introduced hordes of 
reckless and heartless scoundrels to strew the bright water and the 
white rocks with the bleeding corpses of interesting birds, which 
they could make no earthly use of. It was, in truth, one of the 
finest sights in the North of England during the month of June, 
and though, through the jealousy of agents, the naturalist has much 
trouble to encounter, we may yet be thankful for the preservation of 
the still unnumbered bird-breeders on old Farne. 
H. Ecroyp SMiru. 
The Propagation of the Oyster. 
By W. Savitte-Kent, Esq., F.L.S. + 
In the course of the exhaustive evidence concerning the present 
scarcity of the oyster elicited in the inquiry before a Select Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons, published in the ‘Field’ for 
March 25 and April 1, several questions of considerable importance 
* The deposition of eggs by the common (and probably other species of) tern 
varies much—affected doubtless by wind and weather. Upon first visiting Walney 
Island, the eggs of this species were deposited so low in shallow sandy beach as to 
be washed several feet higher by the succeeding neap but increasing tide. A couple 
of seasons later not a solitary egg could be found below high-water mark of spring- 
tides; all lay in hollows among adjacent sand-hillocks. At a third visit they were 
found yet further inland, as well as upon the beach, among sea-weed left by the 
spring tides. It is thus evident that no single year’s experience furnishes any 
criterion, and the “hard and fast line” drawn by some dogmatic writers is false to 
Nature.—H. E. S. 
+ Reprinted from the ‘Field’ of April 15th, 1876, and communicated by the 
Author, 
