BIRD-LIFE AS OBSERVED AT SKERRYVORE LIGHTHOUSE 31 



2ist March last I noticed a bird in this pool, and found that 

 it was a diver that had got left by the tide, and was unable to 

 get out, as there was no room for it to stretch its wings. I 

 spent over an hour watching it, admiring its expertness in the 

 water, and amused at its clumsy attempts to climb up the rocks. 

 When swimming under water it never made the slightest move- 

 ment with its wings, the propelling power being done with its 

 feet alone, and both feet were without exception used simul- 

 taneously, not alternately as we see surface swimming birds 

 usually doing. And what amazed me most of all was the great 

 rate at which it could travel. Of course it was frightened, but 

 allowing for that the speed was extraordinary, for when doing 

 its best the eye could hardly detect anything but a streak from 

 one end of the pool to the other. I took it out of the water, 

 and set it down on the rock. There a more helpless creature 

 one could hardly imagine. In the end I let it flounder into 

 the sea, when it disappeared like magic, and came to the 

 surface more than half-a-mile out. 



SKERRYVORE LIGHTHOUSE. 



ON THE SCOTTISH SPECIES OF OXYURA 



By P. CAMERON. 



SOME time ago I sent to the Abbe J. J. Kieffer the collec- 

 tion of Oxyura I collected during the period I resided in 

 Scotland, to aid him in his monograph of the European 

 species for Andre's " Species des Hymenopteres." As the 

 collection contained an exceptionally large number of un- 

 described species, besides known species unrecorded for the 

 British Isles, and as M. Kieffer in his work does not give 

 the particular localities where the species were captured, I 

 have thought it desirable to draw up a complete catalogue of 

 the collection with the localities where the species were taken. 

 Very little attention has been given to the Oxyura in 

 this country. The late A. H. Haliday and Francis Walker 

 recorded a few Scottish species, and a small number of species 

 have been noted from Scotland in more recent years. In 

 1873 th e Rev. T. A. Marshall published "A Catalogue of 

 British Hymenoptera ; Oxyura " (Entomological Society of 

 London) in which 373 were recorded. As 142 species 



