BREEDING HABITS OF THE SPARROW-HAWK. 43 



the belief to the contrary, the Sparrow-hawk always builds its 

 own nest." Now whether the eminent author I have quoted 

 ever personally studied this species in its woodland haunts in 

 the breeding season or not, seems to me, from the internal 

 nature of his dogmatic teaching, a very open question. Never- 

 theless, no matter how worthy the aim and object which 

 prompt a man to spend endless time and trouble in writing a 

 comprehensive history of all the birds of these islands, it is 

 inevitable that errors should arise from the inherent impossi- 

 bility of any one author being able to verify from adequate 

 personal experience one-tenth of what he has undertaken to 

 describe. Hence (while fully recognising their unquestionable 

 merit in certain instances) my distrust of compilations, and, 

 on the contrary, my unbounded belief in monographs. 



Mr. Seebohm and other justly-famed savants have stated 

 that Sparrow-hawks always build their own nests, and the 

 information has been seized upon and transplanted into 

 numerous ornithological works of modest repute, the authors 

 of which, little dreaming, apparently, that such master-hands 

 could be found tripping over so simple an issue, have obviously 

 purloined their wares without acknowledgment, and assisted 

 to perpetuate and propagate error. If my assumption seems 

 scarcely justified, I would ask, how comes it, then, that falla- 

 cies of the kind quoted continue to the present day? The 

 answer surely is plain enough. The great majority of books 

 on birds are compilations, pure and simple, and though the 

 authors of the same may pretend with questionable taste to 

 scoff at the labours of so-called closet-naturalists, here and 

 there in these very productions may be found indisputable 

 evidence of the writers having gone elsewhere than to nature 

 for their alleged facts. Otherwise there must have been a 

 strange lack of intelligent observation in not a few instances, 

 which is all the more surprising from its marked unanimity. I 

 have found and critically examined many scores of Sparrow- 

 hawks' nests, and have taken hundreds of their eggs, and in 

 the whole of my experience (which, by the way, has not by any 

 means been confined to Leicestershire woodlands) I cannot 

 recall to mind a single case in which the parent birds had not 

 resorted to the old and discarded nests of some other species. 



