RY 3 



The Scottish Naturalist 



No. 5.] 1912 [May 



THE FULMAR: ITS PAST AND PRESENT DIS- 

 TRIBUTION AS A BREEDING SPECIES IN 

 THE BRITISH ISLES. 1 



By J. A. Harvie-Brown, LL.D., F.R.S.E. 

 Plate IV. 



In the following account of the now numerous British 

 colonies of the Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis), we begin with 

 those in Shetland, follow the geographical sequence south to 

 the north coast of the mainland of Scotland, then west to 

 the Outer Hebrides, and end with the recently established 

 colony on the coast of Ireland. But before proceeding to 

 the details of the survey, we desire to recall two important 

 facts in the history of this arctic and sub-arctic bird : first, 

 that the nearest breeding-haunts north of Shetland are in 

 the Faroes, where the species established itself so compara- 

 tively recently as about 1839; and secondly, that the St 

 Kilda colony, which dates back at least to the times of our 

 earliest writers some two hundred and fifty years ago, was 

 for long an isolated southern outpost, and the only one 

 within the British area. In our series of Vertebrate Faunas 

 of Scotland the status of the Fulmar in the several areas was 

 fully treated of down to 1904, the date of the volume on 

 North-west Highlands and Skye, and to that point our present 

 notes cannot avoid being largely a repetition of what we 



1 This paper forms part of an account of the past and present status 

 of the Fulmar throughout its entire range, which we have recently drawn 

 up. The introduction and the extra-British portion will, it is hoped, 

 be published shortly through another channel.— J. A. H.-B. 

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