354 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



invariably at an end with the launching forth on the world of the first brood. 

 So recently as ten days ago (August 12th) I had a Spotted Flycatcher's 

 nest in my garden, containing two young ones. It is not to be doubted that 

 the earliest of the vernal migrants are more leisurely in their fulfilment of 

 an inexorable law of nature ; but my observations lead me to believe that 

 most of those which put in an appearance from about the middle of April 

 atone for their dilatoriness in migration — as compared, of course, with the 

 first comers — by devoting themselves forthwith to the duties inseparable 

 from the reproduction of their species. In this connection it may be of 

 interest to observe that at page 337 of * The Zoologist' for the year 1885, 

 in ' Notes on the Vertebrate Animals of Leicestershire,' the Curator of the 

 Leicester Museum quotes me as reporting the first egg of the Whinchat in 

 1884 as found on April 30th, and adds as a comment that he considers 

 " Mr. Davenport must have mistaken it for the Stonechat, upon the nesting 

 of which he is silent." Now the green pastures of High Leicestershire do 

 not exactly commend themselves as breeding haunts to the Stonechat, 

 and I was silent concerning the nesting of this species in my native county 

 for the not wholly inadequate reason that I have only once set eyes on an 

 example within its borders, and that was in the depth of winter. As a 

 mere detail, however, my experience of this species in regions congenial to 

 its requirements is to the effect that the eggs are procurable in March, and 

 the young generally out of the nests by April 30th. Nevertheless, ignoring 

 as altogether deficient in public interest the more personal question of my 

 competence to discriminate between the two species — not the first time by 

 any means that the accuracy of an observation by a field naturalist has been 

 impugned by the savant of a museum — I think that Harley's ornithological 

 attainments will scarcely be gainsaid, and this author has given April 12th as, 

 in his experience, the earliest date of the arrival of the Whinchat in Leicester- 

 shire. Such being the case, and granting the correctness of my assump- 

 tion as to the promptitude with which the mid-April migrants as a general 

 rule go to nest, April 30th is not at all an impossible date on which to come 

 across a Whinchat's egg. I should be sorry to assert that there is any very 

 wide margin betwixt the dates of the arrivals of Whinchats and Redstarts, 

 and yet I have the most perfect recollection of a nest containing five eggs 

 belonging to the latter species on a certain May 3rd, some twelve or thirteen 

 years ago. The hole in which the nest was built faced due north, and a 

 driving and prolonged snowstorm at dawn on that date resulted in the nest, 

 eggs, and locality being found altogether abandoned by the parent birds 

 some few hours later. During the recent spring I spent a few weeks in 

 North Wales, and found a Yellow Wagtail's nest containing eggs on May 

 5th. To my thinking, this question of how soon the various migrants busy 

 themselves with nesting cares after reaching these shores is replete with 

 interest. May I add that I conceive it a mistaken policy to denounce as 



