NOT MS AND QUERIES. 



353 



one set fresh another partly incubated, and the third with the young 

 hatching. Several nests of House-Sparrow in a stall alongside con- 

 tained fresh eggs and young birds respectively, and in the hedgerow 

 adjoining w r as a Song-Thrush with young. On a straw-stack in an 

 adjacent field, I was told, a French Partridge had nested, but its nest 

 had been disturbed a fortnight previously when some of the straw had 

 been taken aw 7 ay for thatching the hayricks. I counted sixteen eggs 

 scattered about under the stack in a half-rotten condition in various 

 stages of incubation. Along the roadside I found the Linnet's nest 

 which had three eggs on Saturday now contained five, and found two 

 more nests with five eggs and one egg respectively, all fresh ; also a 

 Yellowhammer with two and another with four eggs. By the side of 

 a ditch I found a Common Whitethroat with three eggs apparently 

 hard-sat, and not many yards away was a young Cuckoo almost fully 

 fledged in the nest of a Hedge- Sparrow. This is the latest date at 

 which I have ever found a young Cuckoo in the nest, although I have 

 found a new-laid egg of the Cuckoo in a Whitethroat's nest in the 

 first week in July. On the morning of Aug. 3rd I found two nests of 

 Turtle-Dove with one and tw T o fresh eggs respectively, a nest of 

 Hedge-Sparrow with four eggs all sucked, whilst a few 7 yards further 

 on was another new nest with one fresh egg, two nests of Linnet with 

 four and two eggs respectively, and four nests of Yellow-hammer with 

 one, four, two, and three eggs respectively. In the afternoon I 

 returned to town. — Robert H. Read (Bedford Park, W.). 



A Correction. — In the note appended to the record of the White 

 Chaffinch [ante, p. 315) the word "eggs" was unfortunately omitted. 

 It should read: "Mr. Dresser, in his 'Man. Pal. Birds,' says of the 

 eggs of this bird, 'occasional varieties,' &c." — Ed. 



REPTILIA. 



The Smooth Snake (Coluber lajvis). — It is interesting to know 

 that this somewhat local reptile is still found in the Forest, and upon 

 the heath-lands on the opposite side of the Avon, where it was first 

 established as a British species. The localities where I formerly 

 found it are being gradually built over, but during the summer ;i 

 gentleman, wishing to secure one of the snakes for a friend, asked me 

 if I could tell him where to find it. Having searched near its old 

 haunts he succeeded in capturing three specimens, one a very fine 

 female measuring fully twenty-five inches in length, and of a very 

 dark colour, but having the characteristic dark " crown " and black 



Zool. 4th ser. vol. XIII , September, 1909. 2 B 



