58 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



merely been endeavouring to effect their escape faster than their 

 legs could carry them. My specimen the fifth I have seen from 

 the mouth of the Firth of Forth during the past twelve years 

 -is a female apparently nearing maturity. WILLIAM EVANS, 

 Edinburgh. 



[Mr. D. Bruce, of Dunbar, kindly informs us that a Fulmar was 

 captured two miles off Dunbar by some fishermen. This specimen 

 was brought to Mr. Bruce, alive, on the 22nd of September, and 

 may be the identical bird which afterwards found its way into Mr. 

 Evans's hands. EDS.] 



Fulmar Petrel at Nairn. On 8th September a Fulmar Petrel 

 (Fulmarus glacialis) was killed by a golf- club on the course at 

 Nairn, at a distance of about 60 yards. The strange thing is that the 

 Fulmar Petrel is a rare bird on the East Coast, and especially on 

 land. T. E. BUCKLEY, Inverness. 



The Great Crested Grebe in Wigtownshire. The late Mr. 

 Robert Gray, in his paper on the " Birds of Wigtownshire and 

 Ayrshire," published in the "Proceedings of the Natural History 

 Society of Glasgow," mentions the Great Crested Grebe (Podicipes 

 cristatus) as being very rarely met with in either of these counties, 

 and adds that " few, if any, of the young birds hatched in the Irish 

 loughs find their way to the western shores of Wigtown." One, a 

 young male, has lately arrived on the White Loch of Myreton 

 (Monreith), and I have had several opportunities of watching it 

 through the glass. HERBERT MAXWELL. 



Retinia resinella, Z., in Aberdeenshire. This insect has for 

 many years been known to occur in other districts of Scotland, e.g. 

 Perthshire ; and I would have scarce thought its occurrence in 

 Aberdeenshire worth a paragraph, were it not for a sentence in a 

 " List of Lepidoptera of Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire," by 

 William Reid, Pitcaple, reprinted from the "British Naturalist" in 

 1893. In this list, on p. 28, we find ''Retinia resinana has been 

 reported as occurring in Aberdeenshire (" Entomologists' Record," 

 vol. i. p. 11), this is an undoubted error." I am not acquainted 

 with the record here referred to ; but Mr. Reid's contradiction 

 would appear to imply that the insect does not occur in the 

 county. Negative evidence is never trustworthy ; and in this case 

 it may be set aside, as I found on 8th September current, on a 

 Scotch fir tree by the roadside near Bridge of Ess, west of Aboyne, 

 three of the unmistakable resinous masses formed by the larvae. 

 Each of the three was placed just below a whorl of twigs, which 

 seemed little the worse of its presence. Two of the masses were 

 about as large as a walnut. The third was not more than half as 

 large. JAMES W. H. TRAIL. 



