The Zoologist — August, 18b"8. 1311 



inn, and within a few yards of where I was at the time sitting. Cuckoos 

 were heard first on the 5th of May : I do not think they were more 

 plentiful here this year than last, though I see that such has been con- 

 sidered the case in some parts of England. Swallows and martins 

 were much more abundant, but the latter had not yet laid eggs in the 

 cliff behind the inn, when I left. Also saw a good many sand martins 

 near Ledmore. 



" Teochvingh" is a local Gaelic name here for the greenshank. 



John A. H. Brown. 



Duiiipace House, Falkirk, 

 July 1, 1868. 



Wayside Notes in France and Germany. 

 By Edward R. Alston, Esq. 



The following are a few miscellaneous notes collected during a 

 short tour through part of France and Germany this May. A modern 

 traveller sees but little of the animal life of the countries through 

 which he is hurried in railway-carriages and steam-boats, while the 

 fact of his resting-places being usually at towns is also a disadvantage. 

 In addition to this, an almost tropical heat, such as we experienced 

 even at that early season, is not favourable to energetic research, 

 rendering a mid-day pipe in the shade (not to speak of a brief repose) 

 more inviting than a breathless scramble over rocks and through steep 

 and thorny thickets. Accordingly the following notes refer almost 

 exclusively to the museums we visited, and to the Fauna of the Black 

 Forest and the country near Freiburg-im-Breisgau, where we spent 

 nearly a fortnight, and had thus some leisure for observation. It will 

 be sufficient to state that our route led from Paris by Strasburg to 

 Freiburg and Basle, and thence homewards by Baden-Baden, Heidel- 

 berg and the Rhine. Fear not, reader, you are not about to suffer 

 under glowing but somewhat trite descriptions of the smiling Rhein- 

 ebene and Breisgau, of the dark hills of the Schwartzwald, still flecked 

 with suow, of the rugged Hollenthal, or of the lovely Murgthal, with 

 its towering pines, nestling villages and quaint old schloss. Not even 

 my old favourite, the castle at Heidelberg, with its beautiful contrasts 

 of red stone and green ivy, nor "the castled Rhine," nor the oft-sung 

 Drachenfels itself, shall tempt me into legend or description. I have 

 but little to say, but such as it is shall be an unadorned tale. 



Museums— \ made a more careful examination of the great collec- 

 tions at the Jardin des Plantes than I had ever done before, and on 



