The Scottish Naturalist. 291 



long list of localities visited by these birds, and so carefully 

 drawn up by Professor Newton, I do not find any record of 

 their having been noticed in Perthshire, though in the neigh- 

 bouring county of Forfar several wxre seen, and six shot on 

 the Links of Montrose. Comment on the sad reception of 

 these birds would be here out of place ; I may, however, say 

 that, had they not been everywhere shot down in the shameful 

 way they were, Syr?-haptis paradoxus might, by this time, have 

 become perfectly naturalised, and been added to the British avi- 

 fauna. 



In addition to birds reaching us from the continent of 

 Europe, and these more eastern parts of the world, we are, as 

 before stated, also visited by many from the continent of Ame- 

 rica, from whence no less than sixty-nine species have been, 

 from time to time, noticed in Europe, and over fifty of these in 

 the British Islands alone. Professor Baird of the Smithsonian 

 Institute, in his most interesting and instructive paper on the 

 Distribution and Migrations of North American Birds, in the 

 'American Journal of Science,' 1866 ('Ibis,' 1867, p. 72), says, 

 " In nearly all cases these specimens belong to species abun- 

 dant during summer in New England and the eastern provinces 

 of British America, and that the clue to these peculiarities, at- 

 tending the interchange of species of the two Continents, will be 

 found in the study of the laws of the winds of the northern hemi- 

 sphere as developed by Professor Henry and Professor Coffin." 

 It is curious to note, that nearly all of the fifty species that 

 have appeared in Great Britain have been got in England, only 

 one or two in Scotland ; and the same may be said of Ireland. Of 

 Scottish specimens, I will only mention one — the Ruby-crowned 

 Wren — shot on the banks of Loch Lomond by Dr Dewar of 

 Glasgow (Gray, p. 200), in company with a large flock of 

 Gold Crests in the summer of 1852. Another specimen was 

 also got in England, obtained by the Rev. Dr Tristram, it having 

 been got in the flesh, from a Durham pitman, who had killed it 

 in the same year ; and from this circumstance, Mr Gray is in 

 favour of the surmise, that a migratory flock of these diminu- 

 tive birds may have been driven out of their ordinary flight, 

 and have come, probably through prevalent westerly winds, in 

 the direction of Greenland, from the south of which they would 

 travel by stages — namely, Iceland and the Faroe Islands — to 

 our shores. Whether such were the case, or that, caught up 

 by a westerly gale, and furiously driven before it across the 



