Fishes. 3513 



ing their nests and hatching their young, as regularly as the season came round. In 

 the summer of 1840, a nest, placed under the lintel of one of the windows, became de- 

 tached from the stone by the action of a battering rain, and fell upon the sill, parting 

 into several pieces, which proved to be occupied by an unfledged family of five mem- 

 bers, apparently a few days old. One of them had been dashed out in the fall, preci- 

 pitated to the ground, and killed ; while the others lay exposed in the nest, and at the 

 mercy of the storm. The distress of the parents was seen to be very great, and the 

 expressions of sympathy and commiseration on the part of their neighbours, equally 

 unmistakeable. At this stage, the observant eye of the gentle lady of the manse for- 

 tunately fell upon the scene, and her feeling heart prompted to deliverance. She ac- 

 cordingly thought of procuring a flower-pot, and by careful manipulation succeeded in 

 very nicely depositing within it the shattered habitation, together with its helpless tiny 

 occupants, in perfect safety. A piece of cord was then put round the flower-pot, and 

 the cord having been taken over the upper sash of the window and fixed to a nail within, 

 the whole was suspended as nearly as possible in the position the nest had originally 

 occupied. The martins acknowledged their acceptance of the service, by immediately 

 setting to work and building up the open space that intervened between the flower-pot 

 and the stone, leaving the accustomed portal ; and this somewhat singular tenement 

 having served as a nursery until the youngsters were able to fight their way in the 

 world, was soon after taken clown by the same kind hand which had aided in its con- 

 struction. But what was the surprise of the lawful occupants of the manse, when, next 

 season, their old friends arrived, not in two or three decent manageable pairs, or at 

 most with their latest born progeny, but accompanied, as was presumed, by the grand- 

 fathers and grandmothers, cousins and half cousins, and all other sorts of relations, 

 whether by consanguinity or conventional alliance, amounting to a most formidable co- 

 lony, which so beset our clerical residence that they literally encircled the walls with 

 an unbrokeu chain of rough bumpy-looking pottery ; — proceeded so to fill the air and 

 occupy our pleasure-ground that the purity of neither plant nor garment could be pre- 

 served ; — and so annoyed us with their friendly colloquies, to say nothing of certain 

 more vociferous expressions, whether of fury or of mirth, that at last a writ of ejectment 

 came to be called for, as a necessary measure of self-defence. On its effects being ma- 

 nifested in the demolition of the nests, the whole colony speedily betook themselves to 

 flight; and for years, not so much as a solitary visitor ventured to show himself among 

 us. Last year, however, we were patronised by the presence of four heads of families, 

 and a single pair are at present busily engaged in the process of nidification. Will 

 these details warrant the conclusion that our lively and well known friend, the martin, 

 can appreciate kindness, deduce something like rational inference from a definite act, 

 and communicate his ideas to his brother beings? — George Harris; Manse of Gamrie y 

 May 24,1 852. 



Notes on the Habits of the Shanny (Blennius pholis). — A specimen of the shanny 

 or smooth shan has been in my possession for more than half a year, and being about 

 to restore him to his native ocean previously to my leaving the Island, I pen a short 

 account of his ways and doings observed during that period. He was captured with 

 the aid of a tin gentle-box, in one of the pools left among the rocks on this coast. 

 That his stature is not imposing may be judged from the above circumstance, and 



x. 2d 



