JlISCliLLANEA. 363 



tion. I saw this repeatedly done when the surface of the water 

 was fully twenty feet from the pier edge. None of the birds 

 plunged from the wing, always from a standing position. When 

 any herrings were scattered on the pier or road the Gulls always 

 alighted on the ground before seizing the herrings ; they stooped 

 at fish floating on the surface only. — Richard Hoivse, July, ISQIj.. 



Note on the Nesting of the Peewit.'^' — At Eastertide, 1880, I 

 made an observation on the nesting habit of the Peewit ( Vanellus 

 vulgaris)^ which seemed entirely new, and which, so far as I am 

 aware, has not been mentioned or recorded by any writer on the 

 habits of birds in any work on ornithology. 



It is, I believe, the generally accepted opinion, that all birds 

 after commencing to lay, deposit one egg per day of twenty -four 

 hours. This appears to be the acknowledged rule with regard 

 to domestic poultry, and also with regard to those small well- 

 known birds whose habits are of easy observation, but there are 

 some rare deviations from this rule among domestic fowls, for it 

 is well known that some hens lay two eggs per day occasionally, 

 but not so regularly as to invalidate the rule of one egg per day 

 of twenty -four hours. Till within a few years I certainly 

 thought this was the general rule for all birds, but an observa- 

 tion made at Easter, 1880, led me to doubt the universality of 

 this habit of one egg per day among the Plovers, and to conclude 

 that at least some of them laid their clutch of four eggs in a 

 much shorter space of time than four days. 



On the Saturday morning preceding Easter, 1880, I searched 

 for Pewitts' eggs with a friend in a small field, on the edge of 

 an extensive moor in B/edesdale. The field was very small, and 

 sloped rapidly towards the south, and was enclosed with high 

 stone walls, and was well sheltei'ed from the cold east winds 

 which were then prevailing. A dozen or more Peewits were 

 hovering about over the field, and on our entering it, the birds 

 did not disperse, but kept hovering round us, but did not cry 

 vociferously as when they have nests or young. "We, were, 



* Bead at the Joint Evening Meeting of the Nat. Hist. Society, and Tyneside Nat. 

 Field Club, April 5th, 1892, and appeared in the Yorkshire Naturalist, May, 1892. 



