510 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



The eggs are not very variable, five being a favourite number 

 for a clutch ; very rarely have I known so many laid as six. Mr. 

 W. J. Horn is lucky in the possession of some nice specimens, 

 while his cabinet also contains eggs of both the Lesser White- 

 throat and Tree Pipit, which for beauty of colouring I have never 

 seen equalled. Though I have remarked that Whitethroats' eggs 

 are not very variable, as, for instance, in comparison with those 

 of the Tree Pipit, it is notorious that their ground-colour runs 

 through different shades of bluish white and pale green, and that 

 some specimens are more boldly and elaborately marked with the 

 typical wreath of light brown, violet grey, or olive green spots as 

 the case may be, some of them underlying the shell, than others. 

 One of the most peculiar-looking eggs I ever found was in a nest 

 in a gooseberry-bush at Fronfeuno, near to Bala, in the spring of 

 1894. It was a single specimen, without shape or comeliness, 

 and approximated more in colouring to the eggs of the Orphean 

 Warbler than to those of the Whitethroat. The bird incubated 

 it for a day or so, and then finally deserted its malformed abor- 

 tion which proved to be yolkless. 



Whitethroats have a great partiality for currants and rasp- 

 berries, and in July and August they raid the bushes of my 

 kitchen garden in considerable numbers, and, though I am always 

 hearing that " the birds take the fruit so," I do not grudge it them. 

 "Live and let live" is a good old-fashioned principle, and though 

 Finches pilfer the newly-sown seeds, and, later in the year, Tits 

 filch the peas, I deem myself amply repaid by the facilities they 

 afford me for observing — amidst several other characteristic 

 habits — their thievish propensities. 



