THE CHATS. 9 1 



disturb Ms wife from her beautiful blue eggs you are very- 

 unlikely to find them in the thickening grass of May or June. 

 And even if she is on the nest, she will sit very close ; I have 

 seen an express train fly past without disturbing her, when the 

 nest was but six or eight feet from the rails. The young, when 

 reared, will often haunt the railway for the rest of the summer, 

 undismayed by the rattle and vibration which must have shaken 

 them even when they were still within the egg. Occasionally 

 a Wleatear will make its appearance about the railway, but I 

 have no evidence of its breeding there ; nor is the Stone-chat 

 often to be seen here, though it is a summer visitor not far oflf 

 among the hills. 



Let me say incidentally that no one who has either good eyes 

 or a good glass ought ever to confound the two Chats together. 

 In the breeding-season the fine black head of the cock Stone-chat 

 distinguishes him at once ; but even the female should never be 

 the subject of a blunder, if the observer has been at all used to 

 attend to the attiivdes of birds. The Stone-chat sits upright and 

 almost defiant, and is a shorter and stouter bird than the Whin- 

 chat, which perches in an attitude of greater humility, and 

 always seems to me to deprecate your interference rather than to 

 defy it. And it is quite in keeping with this that the ' chat ' of 

 the latter is not so loud and resonant as that of the former, as 

 I have satisfied myself after careful observation of both ; the 

 Stone-chat penetrating to my dull ears at a greater distance 

 than his cousin. This really means that the bill of the one, and 

 in fact his whole muscular system, is stronger than the same in 

 the other, and the to 6vfioet8es of his constitution is more largely 



