agricultural districts in the Midlands, the mountains of Scotland. The old hole of a Sand-martin in a railway cutting, a crevice in a stone wall, the lee side of a boulder stone, or merely the shelter of a clod of earth in a fallow field serves his purpose. As regards a nesting site, the Wheatear is exceedingly adaptable, suiting himself to the locality. And so the popular names given to this bird seem often misleading to a student of its life-history. In the Southern counties as the “Fallow Chat” it is best known, in Lancashire and Derbyshire it is “Walltack,” “Stonecheek,” “Stone-smack,” or “Smutch”: and this in Staffordshire is “Stone Smasher.” But tack and cheek and smutch all come from the bird’s sharp note “Chack, chack!” uttered as it flits from stone to stone on high land or along the wind-swept downs and warrens. * * * * * Steinschmätzer is the German name for the Wheatear; so the Lancashire name of Stonesmatch is decidedly Saxon. Schmatzen is to kiss heartily--to give a good smack in fact. The French name for this bird, Traquet, was given because of the continual movement of the wings and tail, which is compared to the traquet, or clapper of mills, which is kept in motion by the wind or by the water. * * * * * All works on natural history describe the beautiful Wheatear as always wary and shy to a degree, and chiefly, as we have already said, to be found on warrens and poor lands near the coast, but as being especially plentiful about our South Downs. In other districts, too, it frequents the open ground and rough hillocky pastures. But who would look for the Wheatear amongst the old slag-heaps, in the very heart of the North Staffordshire Potteries? where, too, the bird seems to lay aside its shy and wary little manœuvres.