8 The Scottish Naturalist. 



figure, it would have been a most wonderful object, very unlike a 

 hooded seal, however, or any other denizen of land and water. 

 What most concerns us here is, that from the preceding it 

 may be inferred that the Hooded Seal was then, as now, rarely 

 met with on the coasts of temperate Europe ; otherwise the ap- 

 pearance of the animal would have been better known, and 

 there would have been less room for so many fictitious repre- 

 sentations. Brown* describes the Hooded Seal from observa- 

 tions made by himself while in Greenland, where, amongst 

 other names, it is called the Bladder-nose by the sealers. 

 According to him, it is one of the largest and fiercest of the 

 northern seals, and that although it is found all over the Green- 

 land Seas, from Iceland to Greenland and Spitsbergen, it is not 

 a common animal anywhere. He seems to question the truth 

 of the statement made by Fabriciusf — it is the Phoca leonina of 

 this author — that during the second year the Hooded Seals are 

 snow-white, with a straight line of brown on their backs, as 

 neither he nor any other seal-hunter with whom he had con- 

 versed ever saw such a seal in the Greenland Sea. 



St. Andrews, Nov., 1872. 



Late breeding of the Hedgehog in Scotland.— Both Bell and Macgilli- 

 vray, in their articles on the common hedgehog ( Erhiaceus curopczusj, state 

 that the young are produced early in summer. This does not, however, seem 

 always to be the case, as several instances have of late come under my notice of 

 their breeding in autumn. The two following occurred this year : — At 

 Girvan, in Ayrshire, a gentleman found a brood of young ones in his garden in 

 the end of August, and on the 28th September I found a young one which could 

 not have been more than a day or two old, as its eyes were not open, and the 

 spines were very soft. Can it be that the breeding season is later in the north 

 than in England ? If this is the case the fact has not hitherto been noticed. — 

 Jas. Lumsden, jun=, Arden House, Alexandria, 6th November, 1872. 



Birds of Balctuhidder— Lists of birds have been printed in the " Scottish 

 Naturalist, " one for a north, and another for a soiuh lowland district. The 

 following list is for a south highland district, being the birds of Balquhidder, 

 Perthshire, all of which named are known to breed there, with the exception of 

 those marked with an asterisk : — 



Golden Eagle* ( Aquilla chrysdctosj, seen rarely of recent years ; Peregrine 

 Falcon ( Falco percgrinus), breeds at the head of the valley, and is scarce ; 

 Merlin^, ccsalon), nearly, if not quite, exterminated; Kestral^. tinnunculus), 



•Proc, Zool. Soc., 1868. f Fauna Groenlandica. 



