20 Capt. Elwes on the Bird-Stations 



returned well pleased with our excursion, and with 126 eggs 

 belonging to 13 different species, some of them treasures in 

 their way. 



How the time flies ! The great bankers^ cases, double cross- 

 actions, with heaven only knows how many reserved pleas, have 

 come and gone, and the worthy gentlemen have, to the intense 

 disgust of their respective counsel and attorneys, been induced 

 by " the presence " (your humble servant) to cease fighting 

 about and spending their substance on nothing, and have 

 mutually made all the little concessions necessary, and signed a 

 full and complete quittance and release so thoroughgoing and 

 simple that I will trouble the sharpest of our attorneys to get 

 up any new case out of the old material ; and I, after twelve 

 hours on the bench, have sat far into the night, growing less and 

 less tired every hour, scribbling this story of our morning^s birds'- 

 nesting, hoping that, perhaps, some desk-tied ornithologist like 

 myself, " seeing, may take heart again." 



II. — The Bird- Stations of the Outer Hebrides. By Henry John 

 Elwes, Lieut, and Capt. Scots Fusilier Guards, F.Z.S. 



I BELIEVE that no part of Great Britain is so interesting, and 

 at the same time so little known to ornithologists in general, as 

 the Outer Hebrides, or the " Long Island," as they are called ; 

 for with the exception of the late John Macgillivray, who spent 

 the summer of 1840 there*, and of the late Sir William 

 Milner, who visited St. Kilda and Harris in 1847 1, no one, so 

 far as I know, has, within the present century, published any 

 notice of the birds of those most interesting islands. 



Mr. Robert Gray, of Glasgow, however, has for several years 

 been accumulating notes and observations on the ornithology 

 of the West Highlands, and, it is to be hoped, will shortly 

 publish a work which cannot fail to be highly valued by all 

 who take an interest in the natural history of our own country. 



* " Notes on the Zoology of the Outer Hebrides. By John Macgillm-ay." 

 Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. viii. pp. 7-16. 



t " Some Accovmt of the People of St. Kilda, and of the Birds of the 

 Outer Hebrides. By W. M. E. Mihier," Zoologist, pp. 2054-2062. 



