84 DUBLIN NATURAL HrSTOKY SOCIETY. 



tally deserting.it, apparently without cause. Thompson mentions some 

 similar cases. I remember in the county of Louth, during the intense 

 frost in the winter of 1 855, 1 obser^^d on several occasions immense flocks 

 of starlings towards evening, all flying in the same direction ; they 

 amounted to many thousands, and were e\4dently a migration into that 

 part of the country. I watched them with very great interest, and 

 found that during the severe frost they nightly congregated in a place 

 called Ballydonnell, where they roosted among evergreens and small 

 trees. Why they selected that place I am at a loss to know ; it is only 

 half a mile from the extensive old woods and plantation of Beaulieu, 

 which they actually passed. I never saw them in great numbers there 

 before that winter, nor have I seen them since. 



Mr. J. B. Doyle observed that two instances illustrative of peculiarities 

 in the habits of the starling had come under his notice. When in Wick- 

 low some years since, shooting, in the latter end of August, between 

 Wicklow and Seapark, in a cover adjacent to the sea, his attention was 

 attracted by an unusual noise and chattering, which, on emerging on the 

 strand, he found to proceed from an enormous multitude of starlings con- 

 gregated in the trees, evidently having just arrived in migration ; it ap- 

 peared, however, that this was an unusually early migration of these 

 birds. The other instance had reference to the fact that the starlings do 

 not confine themselves to the one kind of roosting ground. At Duni'an, 

 county of Wicklow, they roost in old ruins. In 1839, after the great 

 storm, at Mr. Templeton's, Waterton Demesne, he saw numbers of them 

 dead and wounded among the trees, killed by the clashing of the boughs 

 against one another. On inquiry he found that the beech trees there 

 were their usual roosting-place. 



The Chairman then declared the following duly elected : — 

 Ordinary Members: — Joseph lleay Greene, Professor, Queen's 



College, Cork; George Dixon, Esq., Dublin; William Hodges, Esq., 



Kathgar. 



Corresponding Member: — The Rev. Robert Harvey, Leek Glebe, 



Letterkenny. 



The Society then adjourned till the 5th of Eebruary. 



FRIDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 5, 1858. 



Pkofessor W. H. Haevey, M.D., M.R.I. A., E.L. S., Pjresident, 

 in the Chair. 



Mr. William Andrews, Honorary Secretary, read the follow- 

 ing— 



NOTES ON THE CAPTURE OF A MUTE SWAN (CYGNUS OLOR) IN DUNDALK PAY. 

 BY LORD CLERMONT. 



The mute swan, which I have the pleasure of presenting to the Dublin 

 Natural History Society, is interesting from having been taken under 



