268 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Two Squirrels had been playing their usual game of ‘ tag” on a tree, 
and now one had gone, and the other was coming straight down the 
trunk in the characteristic way—body vertical, head forwards, and 
hind legs spread out and flattened against the tree. I think he then 
saw us; at any rate, he stopped short, and, after a few motionless 
moments, suddenly lifted both front feet right off the trunk, and held 
them out at an angle of 45° with the vertical. I saw this through 
field-glasses, and a friend also saw it with the naked eye. In this 
extraordinary position—balanced, no doubt, to some extent by the 
tail, but actually supported by the hind claws alone—he remained for 
a time which we agreed was anything from two to five seconds; he 
then resumed a normal attitude, and proceeded on his downward 
way. What was the object of assuming this position I cannot con- 
ceive. I was chiefly impressed by the revelation of the enormous 
muscular strength of the hind limbs.—Junian 8. Huxtey (Balliol 
College, Oxford). 
AVES. 
An Unlucky Pair of Stonechats.— Last April I was watching a 
pair of Stonechats which seemed to be breeding somewhere by a road- 
side near here, and in due time I noticed that they had full-grown 
young with them. This was interesting, for I have never found this 
species breeding here before, though the Whinchat does so every year 
in considerable numbers. On June 9th an intelligent boy who looks 
after cows grazing by the roadside told me that he had found a 
Whinchat’s nest just where the Stonechats had been. This was, 
however, in reality a Stonechat’s nest with six typical eggs, and the 
first I had ever seen. Naturally, I was much disappointed to find 
two days later, from the same boy, that the eggs had been hatched 
but had all vanished. Mr. O. V. Aplin visited the robbed nest with 
me the next day, and came to the conclusion that the robber was a 
Stoat or Weasel, as the nest itself had hardly been displaced. On 
June 19th the same boy gleefully informed me that the birds had 
built another nest, and that there were six eggs init. The first nest 
had been placed well out of sight in a hole ina bank some distance 
from the road, but the new one was not more than two feet from it, 
snugly placed at the bottom of a little thorn-bush about a foot and a 
half high. It was a well-built nest containing six eggs, rather less 
spotted with pale reddish brown than the others. But these plucky 
and persistent birds were not fated to bring up a second brood this 
year. A road-mender, having, I suppose, nothing better to do, fell 
to chopping away the little thorn-bushes by the roadside, and before 
