120 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OP GLASGONV. 



of the coast and its birds "from Ravensliall to the 

 Isle of Hestan," he had never seen a Chough on any 

 part of it. Mr. John M'Kie of Anchorlee, lately 

 Honorary Curator of the Kirkcudbright Museum, to 

 whom I am deeply indebted for making many 

 enquiries on this subject on my behalf, says that 

 Choughs were common on all suitable jDarts of the 

 coast near Kirkcudbright x^rior to about 1850, but 

 between that date and 1870 they had all been exter- 

 minated. 



As an inhabitant of inland localities in this country 

 the Chough seems scarcely ever to have been know^n. 

 I have not been able to authenticate two or three 

 instances known to me, except in the case of a pair 

 which took up their abode on an old ruined build- 

 ing at Bogrie in 1848. These were seen by Mr. 

 Hastings, taxidermist, Dumfries, and others, and 

 although the birds were evidently prej)aring for 

 nesting, they disappeared after frequenting the place 

 for several months. There was a strong suspicion 

 that the gun terminated their career. 



And this brings me to the consideration of the 

 causes which have been at work in the extinction 

 of the Chough in this country. It is, of course, well 

 known that the species is a rapidly-diminishing one 

 everywhere throughout the British Islands, and 

 owing to what I believe is the invariable coincidence, 

 that as the Chough disappears so does the Jackdaw 

 increase and multiply in the dwellings of its red- 

 legged relative : the consequence is that the latter is 

 blamed for driving out the former. This coincidence 

 has been observed in this country in the same w^ay 

 as elsewhere, but I believe there is no actual proof 

 that the Jackdaw is guilty. Still, the o^^inion that 

 he is suspected is advanced with more or less confi- 

 dence by several ornithologists of eminence. But 

 Professor Newton, in the new edition of Yarrell's 

 British Birds, seems disinclined to connect the Jack- 

 daw with the disappearance of the Chough, and Mr. 

 Seebohm, in his splendid History of BritisJi Birds, 



