270 The Scottish Naturalist. 



catcher, and the Stockdove, are additions to the county lists ; the two latter were 

 found nesting in Tyndron. 



Mr. George F. Black read an exhaustive account of Notes on the 

 Ruthwell Cross, in Annandale; and Mr. W. Hastings gave an instalment 

 of Notes On local Ornithology, made during the year. He notes 

 scarcity of swifts ; while sandmartins and cuckoos were unusually numerous. 

 An unfledged woodcock was obtained from Galloway in June, a ruff from 

 Carlaverock, and a quail, in October, a grey grouse-hen, a duck, resembling a 

 Pochard, but apparently not described as British, and several gannets from 

 various parts of the country are among the birds noted. We are glad to see 

 that he has observed a great increase in the number of the small birds since 

 they were thinned by the severe winter some five years since. 



INVERNESS FIELD CLUB.— A meeting of this Club was 

 held in the Free Library on Thursday evening. Mr. William Mackay, 

 solicitor, occupied the chair, and there was a good attendance. Mr. Mackay, 

 in delivering his retiring address, took for his subject " Certain Superstitious 

 Customs noticed in Highland Church Records of the 17th century." He gave 

 an account from the Presbytery records of Dingwall, of the custom of sacrificing 

 bulls to St. Mourie, or Maolbhrubha, at Mourie's Island in Loch Maree ; and 

 in doing so, he took occasion to point out that the "poore ones," who were 

 in the habit of receiving the sacrifices of offerings made to Mourie, were im- 

 properly called "deviles" by Dr. Kennedy in his " Days of the Fathers in 

 Boss-shire," and "devilans" by Dr. Arthur Mitchell in his "Past in the 

 Present." These gentlemen, Mr. Mackay remarked, had misread the record, 

 for the word therein applied to the "poore one " — fi derilan " — was, he thought, 

 an old Gaelic word meaning the poor or afflicted ones. In the vocabulary 

 appended to Kirk's Bible, "deireoil" is given as Gaelic for afflicted, and that, 

 Mr. Mackay was of opinion, was the word that applied to the receivers of the 

 sacrifices. He also gave instances of traces of fire worship. On the 26th 

 June, 1655, tne Presbytery of Dingwall ordained " that the several brethren 

 intimate to their congregations that they desist from the superstitious abuses 

 used on St. John's Day by burning torches through their corns, and fire in their 

 towns, and thereafter fixing their stakes in their kail yards." Mr. Mackay 

 then referred to the adoration of holy wells, and quoted from the Presbytery 

 records of Dingwall and Inverness, and from Synod records of Moray to show 

 hew prevalent the custom was, and what difficulty the clergy had in putting an 

 end to it. — At same meeting, Mr. Ross laid before the members some beauti- 

 ful bronze ornaments and articles found near Croy by Mr. Shearer. They 

 were, 1st, Portions of penannular brooches made of bronze with the sunk 

 pannels filled in with solid plates of gold, ornamented with fillagree work. 

 One specimen was really exquisite in its workmanship, and rivals the Dunbeath 

 one now in the Antiquarian Museum, Edinburgh. 2nd. There was a bronze 

 ornament in fragments like a buckle or bracelet. 3rd. An amber ring seven- 

 eighths of an inch in diameter. 4th. Portion of an Anglo-Roman bead and a 

 silver coin of Coenwalff or Mercia. 5th. A blue glass ring seven-sixteenths of 

 an inch in diameter. He also showed a splendid bronze dagger or javelin - 

 head found at Clava. The blade was about 15 inches long and 2 wide. There 



