302 TEE ZOOLOGIST. 



a tall spire of rock, ending in a really striking resemblance to 

 the head of a grim-looking, professorial old man, stood like a 

 sentinel. On a ledge of the first of these two salient features — 

 pressed, as it were, into the flank of the nameless creature 

 forming its summit— hung the eyrie (small enough, almost, to 

 call a nest), whilst on the chin, or long, thin nose, or sort of 

 Scotch cap (for he wore one) of the other rock-born being, one or 

 other of the birds would occasionally sit perched. These fantastic 

 resemblances, I may say, are, or have appeared to me to be, 

 more common amidst volcanic mountain scenery than where the 

 outlines have been produced by the slow upheaval of sedentary 

 rock-masses. The former, being largely due to the cracking of 

 the cooled lava-sheet, this may be the effect of the greater 

 variety of shapes which the fractured edges have assumed, since 

 the chances of any such accidental resemblance would be thereby 

 proportionately increased. Whatever the reason, these gloomy 

 solitudes are often tenanted by monsters either of man or 

 beast form. 



There was only one place in which my tent could be pitched, 

 so as to have a clear (which was also a near) view of the eyrie, 

 and that was on the very crown, or forehead rather, of a little 

 green knoll, surmounting and, as it were, peeping fearfully down 

 into the horrors of the ravine below. Here it stood — one cord of 

 it amidst the stones of the very rock's brow — uncomfortably 

 shaken sometimes by spasmodic or continuous blasts of wind, 

 but always firm-fixed — however it might be shivering — when I 

 had strayed out, sometimes, and returned, and always there 

 when I awoke in the morning. The eggs of these Merlins were 

 still in process of incubation, on my arrival, and, at 5.45 p.m. — 

 before Sigurdsson had left me — the female, who looks consider- 

 ably larger than the male, had returned, and gone on to the 

 nest, and she sat there continuously till a few minutes before 8, 

 for the most part keeping very still, and only once turning round 

 in it. At about 7, the male Merlin flewjn, and sat in the near 

 neighbourhood of the nest, first on one side of the gorge and 

 then on the other, each time choosing the most salient point of 

 an outstanding rocky buttress or bastion. He remained, thus 

 perched, for perhaps twenty minutes, and then flew away with- 

 out having visited the nest. A little before 8 p.m., as I say, the 



