REVIEWS 6 1 



the reader is the extraordinary amount of antiquarian research that 

 has been bestowed by the author on his subject. In this manner 

 facts of the greatest possible interest have been accumulated and 

 for the first time brought together. 



Mr. Macpherson records 262 species of birds as visiting the 

 English Lake district, past and present. This seems a small number 

 when compared with the avi-fauna of some of the Eastern counties, 

 but it must be remembered that the geographical position of the 

 district is such as to place it, to a great extent, beyond the direct 

 influence of those chief lines of bird flight, which in the autumn 

 bring so many migrants to the East Coast, including many rare and 

 occasional visitors. 



Cumberland and North Lancashire can, however, boast of three 

 rare and far- travelled wanderers, in the Isabelline Wheatear, the 

 Spotted Eagle, and the Frigate Petrel, the first and last being new 

 to the British list. The Wheatear was shot on i ith November 1887, 

 near Allonby ; the two latter by a most strange and singular coin- 

 cidence washed up on the shore of Walney Island in 1875, and 

 both passing through the same hands. 



Eyries of the Sea-Eagle undoubtedly formerly existed at Wallow 

 Crag, Hawes Water, and Buck Crag in Martindale, and probably in 

 other places. Notwithstanding, however, the accumulated facts 

 brought forward by Mr. Macpherson in his endeavour to prove the 

 former nesting of the Golden Eagle in central and western Lakeland, 

 we think there is not sufficient evidence that this has been the case 

 within the period of historic ornithology all the facts when critically 

 examined are equally suggestive that the occurrences are referable 

 to H. albidlla. The positive testimony of Richardson as to the 

 nesting of Golden Eagles in 1788 and 1789 in the Buck Crag, 

 Martindale, is finally disposed of in the negative, by the author him- 

 self, in a footnote at the end of the volume. 



The evidence also supplied as to the former nesting of the Osprey 

 is exceedingly nebulous and cannot be considered conclusive. Sea- 

 Eagle and Osprey are often synonymous terms with the old ornithol- 

 ogists. The record or tradition says nothing of the position of the 

 eyrie of reputed Ospreys in Whinfield Park in the last century, and 

 both Eagle and Osprey we know do occasionally select trees for 

 their nesting places. In the second instance adduced, the precipices 

 on the Westmoreland side of Ullswater are a most unlikely posi- 

 tion for an Osprey's nest but very likely for the Sea-Eagle. Dr. 

 Heysham, who wrote towards the close of the eighteenth century, in his 

 "Catalogue of Cumberland Animals," published in Hutchinson's 

 Cumberland, 1794, makes separate species of the Sea-Eagle and the 

 Cinereous or White-tailed Sea-Eagle. Of the former he says : " A few 

 years ago there used to be an annual nest in the rocks which sur- 

 round the lake of Ullswater, and the great trout of that lake 

 had been taken out of its nest." The concluding sentence of the 



