The Dawson Leuco 



the bottom of the cliff, with ten feet to spare. Down this William present- 

 ly descended. With a shout he greeted the appearance of the first nest, 

 and with another shout reported that its four eggs were fresh. The nest, 

 it seems, was set in a shallow cranny almost invisible from below, so that 

 the eggs were only four or five inches in, and the skirts of the scanty pile 

 reached the edge. The female had darted off when the rope was cast over, 

 but she returned now and circled the clinging lad with anxious cries. The 

 eggs were put hastily into a box, and the nest went into William's hat, 

 after which he quickly descended a matter of twenty feet, where a tiny 

 ledge afforded temporary respite. Here he managed to pack the eggs 

 securely, to wrap the nest in tissue, and to lower them both to my waiting 

 hands. 



The next site, a little to one side, is much more difficult. A deep 

 recess some twelve feet wide, eight feet high, and from three to six feet 

 deep, has been formed by the recent defection of a great block of schist. 

 The back of this cavity has been rent and shattered as by an explosion. 

 Some of the ragged fragments are ready to tumble at a breath, and the 

 overhang itself looks very unstable. I besought William to arrange his 

 loops for entirely independent action; but he neglected to do so at first, 

 with the result that when he did eventually cast them, as he was obliged 

 to do, they were not well placed, and one was non-functional. 



It was fortunate that we had seen the exact spot at which the bird 

 entered, and that I was able to indicate it from below. Peeping in, the 

 boy saw the skirts of a nest set well back and quite unobtainable. The 

 overhang was so great that William had great difficulty in keeping in touch 

 with the situation. There wasnot sufficient projection from the cliff itself 

 to support his weight entirely, so he struggled with the diverse purposes 

 and functions of rope and knob. Finally, in desperation, he ascended the 

 rope a little and pried frantically with his foot at the most obstructive rock. 

 By alternately bearing down and toeing up he succeeded in dislodging it, 

 and it fell, a hundred-weight crashing amid a cloud of rock-dust. When 

 the air cleared, the boy beheld a handsome nest now scantily supported, 

 but holding four eggs apparently fresh, "93/4-19 Dawson's Leuco." Now 

 to retrieve them ! He first tried the use of the box. With a foot on the 

 cliff, hugging in, and the other in the loop of the rope, and with the left 

 arm about the rope and the hand clutching the box, he reached up with 

 the right hand and abstracted an egg, when another supporting rock of 

 twenty pounds weight or so let go, bringing the nest down with it. The 

 boy frantically intercepted the nest while the rock placidly lighted on the 

 back of his neck. He succeeded in shaking off the incubus and at the 

 same time holding onto the nest amid the attendant smother of rock-dust. 

 This was, it must be confessed, a rather complicated moment. There was 



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