4S2 LESTRIS CATARRACTES. 



habits ; keeping its body nearly horizontal when standing, 

 walking and running with quick steps, and having a light 

 and buoyant flight, more rapid and direct, however, than that 

 of the Gulls. Its voice resembles that of a young Gull, 

 being sharp and shrill, and it is from the resemblance of its 

 cry to that of the word Skua or Skui that it obtains its 

 popular name. 



This bird has seldom been met with on the coasts of 

 England or Ireland, or even on those of the south of Scot- 

 land ; nor does it occur, in so far as I know, among the 

 Hebrides, and but rarely even in the Orkneys. In the Shet- 

 land Isles, however, it was formerly not unfrequent, although 

 even there it had but a few breeding-places. Several persons 

 have supplied from their own observation various particulars 

 relative to the habits of this remarkable bird. Of one of these. 

 Dr. Edmondston, who has enjoyed the best opportunities of 

 becoming familiar with it, has favoured me with the following 

 notes : — 



" The Skua is now become rare in Zetland, in consequence 

 of proprietors permitting rapacious bird-collectors to shoot 

 them indiscriminately during the breeding season. In Unst 

 there is only one locality frequented by thom, and in all the 

 country there are not more than four or five. In the one 

 alluded to, the colony had been reduced to a single pair some 

 years ago. Since then it has been, through my instru- 

 mentality, efficiently protected, and now it reckons more than 

 ten pairs. This is, I suppose, the most northern preserve in 

 Great Britain, and as such, perhaps, deserves to be recorded. 

 It is surprising that proprietors are in general so careless of 

 the preservation of these ornaments of their properties and 

 cheerers of these bleak and Avild solitudes, which they possess 

 in the wild fowl that frequent them, or will persist in shutting 

 their eyes to the fact that if once a colony inhabiting a certain 

 situation is extirpated, by a law of instinct very general and 

 very imperative, it will never again be tenanted by the same 

 species, although it may be numerous at no great distance. 

 And nothing can be more easy or more just than to prevent 

 depredations, whatever jurists may learnedly talk about Fera? 

 natura^, or demagogues ignorantly or insidiously declaim 



