6 



RENNIe's MONTAGU. 



than three inches above watermark. She covered 

 her eggs, both before and after she began to sit. 



Another wild duck, in this same year, made her 

 nest in the thick ivy, upon the top of an old ruin, 

 full 18 ft. from the water ; and she regularly did the 

 same thing with regard to her eggs. Did the last 

 duck do this to preserve the eggs from the fatal 

 influence of the vicinity to water, full 18 ft. below 

 her, witli a thick wall intervening ? 



While this duck on the ruin carefully covered 

 her eggs every time she voluntarily left the nest, a 

 chaffinch, a wagtail, and a ringdove, building in the 

 ivy of the same ruin, never covered their eggs at all 

 on leaving the nest ; while in deep holes of the same 

 ruin, a barn owl, a jackdaw, a starling, a house 

 sparrow, and a redstart, had their eggs safely shel- 

 tered from wind, and cold, and rain. 



I offer these facts and observations to young na- 

 turalists as a kind of Ariadne clew, to help them 

 through the labyrinth of waterfowl incubation. 

 Should they not suffice, all I can do is, to recom- 

 mend the bewildered ornithologist to go to that far 

 eastern country where the vizier of Sultan Mahmoud 

 understands the language of birds. Though, pos- 

 sibly, the vizier may now be dead, still his surprising 

 knowledge has, no doubt, descended to his offspring; 

 just in the same way as a hereditary knack at legis- 

 lation goes down from father to son in our English 

 peerage. We are told that — 



*' Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis ; 

 Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum 

 Virtus." 



