258 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



have been seen in Banffshire prior to 1860; one said to have been 

 seen in Unst, Shetland, on ist January 1861 ; an immature female 

 shot on the Firth of Forth, near North Berwick, on 2nd October 

 1877 ; and an adult male in summer dress obtained in Mull on 

 7th or 8th September 1883. But two adult specimens appear to 

 have been obtained in Britain the Mull bird and a Yorkshire one. 

 Seeing I am unable to substantiate the present record by the 

 production of the bird, a form of evidence the value of which I fully 

 appreciate, it is fortunate Mr. Thornley was with me and can bear 

 witness to the facts I have above stated. WILLIAM EVANS, Edinburgh. 



Char in Loeh Lomond. In the April number of the " Annals " 

 I chronicled the capture of a well-marked specimen of the Char 

 (Salmo alpinus) in the river Fruin, a tributary of Loch Lomond, 

 and find that Mr. A. Brown, in the July number of the periodical, 

 tries to negative this fact by stating that during his long experience 

 in angling and netting in the loch he has never met with a specimen 

 of the fish. This does not count for much when confronted with 

 the actual capture of a Char that must have come up from the loch 

 for spawning purposes ; and it may be said, with all due deference, 

 that Mr. Brown may have seen and failed to recognise the fish as 

 distinct from some variety of the common trout. This seems all 

 the more likely when we find it stated that it has never been caught 

 in the net in Loch Lomond a remark that shows that he is 

 apparently unacquainted with the habits of the Char, which avoids 

 nettable water, and lives in the deepest parts of lochs. The 

 circumstance that, some eighteen or twenty years ago, a few hundreds 

 of American Brook Trout were put into the Finlas, another stream 

 running into Loch Lomond, is of no account with respect to the 

 point at issue, as this fish, when thus introduced, is said to take an 

 early opportunity of migrating, it is believed, to the sea, and may or 

 may not return. In fact, so far as I have heard, no specimen of the 

 American Brook Trout has been seen in the loch for a number of 

 years. Besides, the American Brook Trout (like the S. hncho] differs 

 materially from the Common Char in the arrangement of its teeth, 

 and in other respects, which render the identification of the species 

 easy enough for any one accustomed to handle fish for scientific 

 purposes. In mentioning the presence of Char in Loch Dochart, a 

 near neighbour of Loch Lomond, I was not oblivious of the circum- 

 stance that these two lochs belong to different water systems. 

 What I had in my mind's eye was, that as numerous tributaries of 

 these two lochs interlace on the gathering-grounds, it might happen 

 that during floods fish might pass from the one to the other, as the 

 Salmon is said to sometimes get into the upper waters of the 

 Clyde. G. BIDIE, Cheltenham. 



Lophopteryx eamelina, very pale variety of, at Aviemore, 

 Inverness-shire. On sist May 1893, I found on the trunk of a 



