On the Nesting of Cinclus Europaeus. 383 
The lapse of two years might suffice to obliterate the traces 
of the injury. 
IV. On the . Nesting of Cinclus Europaeas. By J. Duns, D.D., F.R.S.E., 
New College, Edinburgh. 
As the nest now on the table is, so far as I am aware, 
the only one of the kind which has been observed, I have 
thought it might not be uninteresting to show it to the 
Society. 
The nest is double, consisting of two compartments under 
one roof, divided by a mutual partition. While the roof is 
one, the depression in the middle preserves the usual rounded 
appearance of the covering of the single nest over both 
divisions. The nest was built in eight days. It consists of 
hypnums, intermixed with the dried leaves and stalks of 
slender grasses. The inside lining is formed of withered 
beech leaves. This is the favourite lining. When beech 
trees are not in the immediate neighbourhood of the nesting- 
place, I have known this bird fly a considerable distance 
to procure them. The withered leaves of the oak are some- 
times used instead. 
In four days after the nest was finished, three eggs were 
dropped ! the third on the 22 d day of April. 
As the place in which it occurred is within gun-shot of a 
public work, and as many boys frequent the locality, I was 
led to remove it before the work of breeding was completed, 
lest it should have been destroyed. The nest was taken 
from the ledge of a weathered freestone rock, about five feet 
above the surface of the Graiuhill Burn, a stream which 
drains the hills on the east of Torphichen, Linlithgowshire, 
and joins the Avon about one hundred yards to the east of 
the Avon Steel Work. Ten or twelve years ago, the place 
was a favourite haunt of the kingfisher, which is now rarely 
met with there, though the dipper, the sandpiper, Yarrel's 
wagtail, and Eay's wagtail, are frequently seen. 
I ascertained, beyond all doubt, that the nest was the 
work of one pair of birds. They began by covering tlie sur- 
