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, 
fail 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, with 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." 
