92 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



first lot were left they would both prove fertile. I had the 

 pleasure of seeing this pair and their solitary young one on the 

 lake ; they come down by easy stages from lake to lake until they 

 reach the sea. 



On fishing expeditions I visited most of the larger of the 

 Rosses Loughs, and, as they are studded with small islets, they 

 were the favourite breeding-ground of innumerable Terns, Com- 

 mon and Arctic ; and on one lough (Alecmore) I found a large 

 colony of Common Gulls (Larus canus) with their young, who 

 were now fairly strong on the wing, and able to swim well. A 

 pair of Red-breasted Mergansers (Mergus serrator) inhabit this 

 lough ; I discovered the nest among a clump of brambles on an 

 islet, and it contained about ten eggs, which were well covered 

 up with down. 



At Crohy Head (where some ships of the Spanish Armada 

 were wrecked) I found a nest of the Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) 

 with young ; the nest was in a very steep part of the cliff, but 

 easily seen from above by leaning over the edge ; it is close by 

 here that the soap-stone quarries are situated, but owing to the 

 unsafe anchorage for vessels the quarries are not now worked. 



Dunfanaghy. — This is the stopping-place for the unrivalled 

 promontory of Horn Head. I had only one day to spend here, 

 so visited it on foot from the mainland, although the best way to 

 see its full magnificence is by boat. Accompanied by Strain, the 

 cragsman, I was shown the site of three eyries of the Peregrine 

 (F. peregrinus), from two of which my guide had taken the young 

 Falcons, and sold them for one pound apiece. The remaining 

 nest had baffled all his efforts to approach, as it was protected 

 by an overhanging rock, and consequently he could not swing 

 himself into it by a rope from above. I lay above this eyrie and 

 watched the parent birds, who sat on a cliff opposite, and afforded 

 me the pleasure of a good view through my field-glasses. Strain 

 tells me all the young Peregrines hatched on the Horn are driven 

 away by the parent birds for nesting-sites to the Muckish Moun- 

 tains, where, he says, he also goes for young Falcons. The in- 

 numerable quantities of seafowl which inhabit the Horn baffle all 

 description. I found Puffins, Razorbills, Common Guillemots, 

 Kittiwakes, Herring-Gulls, each on their own allotted ledges, busy 

 in their work of incubation, or feeding their young. Strain, who 



