176



shout with the celebrated but otherwise unknown poet:—Oh,

what a lyARK ! ! !


Habitat .—“ Central Asia, ranging into Southern Russia,

and sometimes even further westward.”


August 21st .—The young bird has since been quietly

assuming the plumage of the adult female.



THE NESTING OF THE PENNANT,


By the Rev. C. D. Farrar.


I am sometimes afraid that members of our Society will

weary of my frequent signatures over articles sent in ; but I

cannot help my birds doing so well ; so with this brief apology,

I will begin again.


I may perhaps be permitted, before commencing my story,

to refer my readers back to a paper I wrote last } r ear on the “ Sex

of Pennants.” I then pointed out that there is no possibilit}' of

mistaking a cock and hen Pennant.


The cock has a crimson head extending right over the

cheeks and neck ; the hen has her head of an orangy-reddish

tint. But leaving out, for fear of wearying my readers, many

other points to which I then drew attention—the absolutely

certain way of telling a hen is by her tail. In the hen Pennant

the centre feathers are gree?i ; in the cock they are rich violet.


I refer to this point because Mr. Fillmer saw fit to put

in, what I considered under the circumstances, a most (shall we

call it ?) impolite footnote to my article :—


“ We do not hold ourselves responsible for any of the

opinions or facts stated in this article. The same applies to all

articles published in this Magazine ; but we wish it to be clearly

understood in this case, as our personal feeling is that Mr.

Farrar’s conclusions require to be confirmed by the observation

of other specimens, besides the pair he writes about, before they

can be accepted.—E d.”


I said nothing at the time ( a ), but, thinks I, we will bide

our time, and “all things come to him that waits.” These

things have come to me. My Pennants have bred, and it is not

the same hen I wrote about then, but a new one ; and she has,

mirabile dictu, the same signs of sex as her predecessor! So even

Editors may live and learn.



( a) This is scarcely correct—Mr. Farrar said a good deal, in correspondence with

is.—E d.



