74 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



everyday in Red Grouse and possess no subspecific value. 

 Trinomialists who disagree must erect, not two, but a dozen 

 subspecies. 



The original mistake whence sprang all this confusion 

 seems to have arisen from an idea that the paler-breasted 

 Brents (now surnamed Glaucogastrd) emanated exclusively 

 from America. But surely that antiquated myth has, or at 

 least ought logically to have been long ago exorcised. 

 Dozens of travellers in Spitsbergen and Nova Zembla 

 which are not American have testified to finding pale- 

 breasted Brents breeding in those lands by the thousand. 

 Personally I can certify that of thirty or forty specimens 

 killed and examined by me in Spitsbergen in 1881, every 

 one belonged to that type. Again, on Kolguev, still further 

 east, Mr Trevor-Battye found both forms assembled together 

 side by side in tens of thousands. All these facts have been 

 recorded. How is it that, in scientific ornithology, concrete 

 statements such as these should be set aside as it were 

 contemptuously while other records (some of which appear 

 to me little better than childish) should be cited again and 

 again ? 



Witness p. 25 supra. Quoting the B.O.U. List of British 

 Birds and let me speak of that with all due respect, having 

 been a member of the Union for thirty-two years the Brent 

 Goose is stated to be " a winter visitant, numerous in the 

 Shetlands" ; but a few lines later we read, " Other Authorities, 

 however, state that the Brent Goose is scarce in Shetland." 

 There is something rather pathetic in this spectacle of 

 " Authorities " who, while instructing us as regards the Geese 

 on the other side of the world, beyond Greenland's icy 

 mountains, are yet quite uncertain as to elementary facts in 

 their distribution in home waters. The instance, however, 

 is quite symptomatic of modern scientific ornithology. 



Whether Brent Geese frequent the Shetlands in winter 

 or not, I cannot personally state ; but those rocky islands 

 appeared to me (in a single spring visit thereto) about the 

 last places on earth in which I should expect to find them 

 wintering. It is quite a minor point, and could be settled 

 by any competent wildfowler in half a season, or less. 



