1884-85.] Edinburgh Naturalists' Field Club. 197 



are always graphic and simple, and his style pleasing ; and it has 

 been remarked that his Essays may very appropriately take their 

 place beside White's ' Selborne.' The exceptional animal to which 

 Waterton would give no protection, but with which he carried on 

 war to the knife, was the common Brown Rat — an animal, as we 

 know, not indigenous to these islands. Waterton asserts with 

 great confidence that the same vessel which brought over William 

 III. brought also the Hanoverian or Norway Eat, and he looked, as 

 a Catholic and naturalist, on both arrivals as unmitigated evils.^ 



Waterton was very severe in his criticism of Audubon's account 

 of the Passenger-pigeon, endeavouring to show that the latter's 

 statement of the enormous congregation of these birds was a gross 

 exaggeration. But after an assemblage I once witnessed of our 

 common Starling, I can believe much of Audubon's essay. There 

 is a place in my native county where the public road is separated 

 from a small lake by a narrow belt of plantation, and at this part 

 of the lake is a large bed of reeds — a favourite roosting-place for 

 Starlings in tlie winter. Some years ago, about Chi'istmas, I was 

 passing this spot at sunset, on a calm evening, when, all at once, I 

 heard what I supposed to be a rush of wind through the trees, and 

 immediately a black cloud seemed to come over, making it very 

 perceptibly darker. I looked up, and the sight which I then wit- 

 nessed was one never to be forgotten. A cloud was indeed passing 

 over, but it was not one of vapour, but a very dense one of Starlings, 

 and the noise, as I supposed of wind, was made by the wings of 

 the birds as they rose from the reeds. Above and all around me 

 in the air, covering a large area, there was nothing to be seen but 

 Starlings, and I can say with perfect truth that tliey darkened the 

 air. No doubt we have all seen such large flocks, but this was 

 evidently all the flocks from the country round met together, and it 

 would be impossible for me to form at all an adequate estimate of 

 numbers ; and after witnessing this, I could not help thinking 

 Audubon's account of the Passenger-pigeon might not be so improb- 

 able or impossible as Waterton would wish us to believe. Waterton 

 on some questions in Natural History takes up a position which 

 to my mind is untenable, though I should maintain on the whole 

 that he was a most careful and accurate observer. He always 

 denied the utility — nay, the existence — of the oil-gland in birds ; 

 and his reasoning on the subject is to me very unsatisfactory. 

 I imagine no one can watch carefully the habits of our common 

 Duck without being convinced that Waterton was wrong. Daily 

 do I observe my beautiful little Call-drake pinch this gland with 



^ From information which has recently reached us, it appears that the 

 Norway Rat has been unfortunately allowed to gain a footing in New Zealand, 

 and is treating the indigenous New Zealand Rat as it did our Black Rat, ren- 

 dering its extermination almost a certainty. 



