ON THE BREEDING OF CERTAIN WATER-FOWL. 449 
how they brought the young ones down I never could find out. 
The wall has been pulled down for a great many years, so I have 
no chance of seeing them brought down from there. One or two, 
however, nest every year in the ivy on a low wall near the pond, 
from which the young must be brought down by the mother, so 
I hope to witness the performance some day; but it is done almost 
immediately after hatching, as I have never found young in the 
‘nests on the wall. One day the old duck would be sitting hard 
-and no young hatched; the next day there would be only the 
ege-shells in the nest, and the young would be swimming about 
with their mother in the pond. 
Though there has always been ever since I can remember 
a pair of Tufted Ducks, Fuligula cristata, on the pond, they have 
never bred or shown the slightest disposition to do so. 
There have always been a pair or two of Pochards, Fuligula 
ferina, on the pond ever since I can remember, but they only once 
nested and hatched a brood—namely, on the 12th May, 1872. 
(See Zool. 1872, p. 8243.) This brood, which consisted of four 
young ones, one other being left dead in the nest, I am sorry 
to say, did not survive long, for on the next day, the 13th, 
they were washed down one of the waterfalls in a flood, and all 
drowned but one, which I fished out and returned to its mother. 
During the time the young were alive the mother beat off the old 
drake, and would not let him come near her or her brood; but 
when she thought all the young were lost she took to the drake 
again. When I found and restored to her the one which was still 
alive she immediately took to it and beat the drake off again; the 
young one, however, did not live long, some accident having 
happened to it. Since that time the Pochards have never brought 
out a brood; the hen bird has laid and begun sitting, but accidents 
have prevented her hatching, partly because she has never made 
such a judicious choice of a nesting-place. ‘The Pochard is the 
last on my list of the ducks which I have been successful in 
breeding from. 
With the gulls I have also, to a certain extent, been successful. 
A pair of Herring Gulls, which I caught in Sark before they could 
fly, in June, 1866, nested and hatched their first young on the 
14th June, 1873, having only attained their fully adult plumage 
that year. Since then they have laid regularly, and frequently 
been successful in rearing the whole or part of their brood. They 
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