166 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



because I had no desire to "collect" them. I resolved to tell 

 the keeper of the unusual discovery, although I expected him to 

 grumble because I had not destroyed them. To my surprise he 

 was well pleased. He told me how his master had caused all the 

 Hawks on his estate to be slain as far as was practicable, with 

 the exception of an occasional pair in woods lying remote from 

 each other. He desired to protect his coverts, but, like a true 

 sportsman, he could admire a stately bird in mid-air; con- 

 sequently a pair was suffered to nest here and there undisturbed. 

 These orders, the keeper continued, had been in force some ten 

 years, and the clutches of surviving pairs had each year increased 

 from the time when he had received orders to destroy as many 

 as possible. There were now remaining some three or four pairs 

 of Sparrow-Hawks on the whole estate. The Kestrels had been 

 exterminated. He had frequently found clutches of six of late 

 years, and on rare occasions the larger number of seven. This 

 certainly appears to point to the conclusion that increased scope 

 for foraging results in increased fecundity. 



The Yellowhammer is an excellent example of my point. 

 After a long correspondence in the ' Feathered World,' Mr. John 

 Craig, of Beith, and one or two others began to collect statistics 

 regarding the usual number of eggs deposited by this Bunting in 

 one nest. Mr. Craig himself showed that in Ayrshire a clutch of 

 three was normal ; this county consists largely of sheep-farming 

 land, and alternates between rather thin close-cropped grazing- 

 ground and furze-clad moorland, foliage and herbage being nowhere 

 luxuriant. In a western English county I obtained sufficient evi- 

 dence to show that five was there the usual clutch ; while a Cheshire 

 friend stated that four was usual in his neighbourhood, five and 

 three being of less common occurrence. Cheshire, as regards 

 fertility, comes about half-way between the two extreme in- 

 stances previously cited. It possesses a tolerably productive soil, 

 bearing a reasonable proportion of woodland and thick ground 

 herbage. 



To speak on broader lines, I everywhere found large clutches 

 in the west and small clutches in the north. I well remember 

 one afternoon with the birds of Somersetshire. The ground we 

 traversed was a large plain, moist, loamy, and dark-soiled, inter- 

 sected by numerous rhines, fences, and hedgerows. Nests were 



