Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/192

166 because I had no desire to "collect" them. I resolved to tell the keeper of the unusual discovery, although I expected him to grumble because I had not destroyed them. To my surprise he was well pleased. He told me how his master had caused all the Hawks on his estate to be slain as far as was practicable, with the exception of an occasional pair in woods lying remote from each other. He desired to protect his coverts, but, like a true sportsman, he could admire a stately bird in mid-air; consequently a pair was suffered to nest here and there undisturbed. These orders, the keeper continued, had been in force some ten years, and the clutches of surviving pairs had each year increased from the time when he had received orders to destroy as many as possible. There were now remaining some three or four pairs of Sparrow-Hawks on the whole estate. The Kestrels had been exterminated. He had frequently found clutches of six of late years, and on rare occasions the larger number of seven. This certainly appears to point to the conclusion that increased scope for foraging results in increased fecundity.

The Yellowhammer is an excellent example of my point. After a long correspondence in the 'Feathered World,' Mr. John Craig, of Beith, and one or two others began to collect statistics regarding the usual number of eggs deposited by this Bunting in one nest. Mr. Craig himself showed that in Ayrshire a clutch of three was normal; this county consists largely of sheep-farming land, and alternates between rather thin close-cropped grazing-ground and furze-clad moorland, foliage and herbage being nowhere luxuriant. In a western English county I obtained sufficient evidence to show that five was there the usual clutch; while a Cheshire friend stated that four was usual in his neighbourhood, five and three being of less common occurrence. Cheshire, as regards fertility, comes about half-way between the two extreme instances previously cited. It possesses a tolerably productive soil, bearing a reasonable proportion of woodland and thick ground herbage.

To speak on broader lines, I everywhere found large clutches in the west and small clutches in the north. I well remember one afternoon with the birds of Somersetshire. The ground we traversed was a large plain, moist, loamy, and dark-soiled, intersected by numerous rhines, fences, and hedgerows. Nests were