60 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



meet. Then she sweeps away to the nest, and he passes once 

 or twice before it, from side to side of the gorge. It looks as 

 though the female, having seen the male, had expected him to 

 be bringing her something and flown to receive it of him, but if 

 so she was disappointed, and returned unladen to the nest, 

 having hardly been away a minute. 



3.37 p.m. Bird off, and returns, unladen, at 3.42. She went 

 silently and suddenly, and there was no cry or other sign of the 

 male. In less than another minute she again sweeps away — all 

 as before — returning very shortly, and then again, about 3.46, 

 and returns at 3.50, still unladen. In the interval between one 

 or other of these flights, she walked a little way out of the nest, 

 along the ledge, pulled at or picked some of the grass, laid it 

 down, or made as though doing so, and then went through some 

 of those curious actions which I have recorded of her, and also 

 once of the male, during the incubatory period. These can now 

 have nothing to do with the eggs, nor, being made outside the 

 nest, with the chicks either. Inferentially, therefore, they have 

 nothing, at any time, to do with them— they are not domestic 

 actions. They follow, however, upon the pulling or plucking of 

 grass, which is a nidificatory act, and have before been gone 

 through on the nest itself, so that here we seem to have the true 

 bond of association. Yet what, in themselves, can such move- 

 ments — or some of them— have to do with the actual construction 

 of the nest, and why do they so closely resemble those which, in 

 another bird — the Peewit — seem to proceed out of a sort of sexual 

 frenzy, but, as a result of, or, at least concomitantly with which, a 

 nest-like depression in the ground is produced ? * All this we can 

 understand by supposing that it is out of such mere physiological 

 movements that the nidificatory instinct has been evolved. It is 

 easier to imagine the process by which sexual display may also have 

 grown out of them, and, for my part, I have little doubt of this. 



A little after this, there is the twittering of the male Merlin, 

 more faint than usual. The female does not seem immediately 

 to remark it, but, all at once, as though she did, she flies over 



* From more recent observation I can now say that, to a certain limited 

 extent, the male Peewit lines this depression. The actions alluded to I have 

 already described in the ' Zoologist ' for April, 1902. When last witnessed 

 they seemed to me even more salient, showing how marked and peculiar 

 they are. 



