NOTES AND QUERIES. 425 
reckon_on seeing a Starling on the back of a “ Southdown” than on 
that of a“ Kent”; in fact, I do not know that a Starling has ever 
been seen by me on the back of any other than a Southdown sheep. 
It would be interesting to learn from readers of ‘ The Zoologist’ to 
what extent the practice is followed in those localities where the 
sheep are mostly of breeds producing long and coarse wools. It is 
not so often that I see a Starling on the back of a cow or bullock— 
indeed, one might say seldom—but possibly in the future this will 
have become quite a common sight, provided the Starling continues 
to inerease in enclosed districts at the same rate that it has done 
during the past twenty-five years. Both the Starling and the Jack- 
daw will sometimes alight upon the back of a deer; it is not-very 
unusual to see them on the backs of the fallow-deer in the Hon. H. B. 
Portman’s park at Buxted, in Sussex—Ropert Morris (Uckfield, 
Sussex). 
Some Notes on the Carrion-Crow (Corvus corone).—Throughout 
Somerset the Carrion-Crow is a common resident species, and nests 
may be found yearly in any part of the county, but it breeds most 
commonly over the lower portions of the county, the moorlands and 
central flood areas, getting scarcer when the Mendips are reached. 
Being an extremely wary bird, it holds its own well, in spite of the 
persecution it receives at the hands of the farmers and gamekeepers, 
who, when they can manage it, shoot them mercilessly, whether in 
the breeding-time or not, by reason of the havoc they commit with 
the eggs and young of poultry; one farmer assured me that a Crow 
carried off the eggs from under a hen which was sitting in his yard, 
so throughout the countryside they are detested as much as Sparrow- 
Hawks wherever the poultry-yard exists. My experience of the 
nesting of this species shows that a pair of birds, or perhaps in time 
their descendants, will return year after year to the same spot, and 
build a new nest each season in the same or an adjacent tree, until 
six or more old nests, or portions of them, may be counted. On 
certain parts of the moorlands they utilize the low birch and alder 
trees for nesting purposes, the nests being reached without much 
climbing ; another favourite site is the thick top of a fir tree. In 
these quiet and out-of-the-way spots of the moorlands they get little 
molestation from the gunner, and breed abundantly and in compara- 
tive safety. The nest, when placed in the thin top of an alder tree, 
is a bulky structure, but small when placed in the fork of a lateral 
branch of an elm, a favourite nesting tree on the higher ground 
around Wells, but here the commonest position for the nest is a 
