74 Transactiona. 



the ash), I have some difficulty in fencing the nest from cats 

 by means of thorn and holly branches fastened round the 

 root of the tree. The bird repays me with its picturesque 

 movements in hunting its flies. What kind of flies it likes 

 best, I have not yet found out ; but it is obviously nice in 

 its choice. A difference of flies and insects depends much 

 on a difference of vegetation ; vegetation depends much 

 on soil, and soil on geological formation : and therefore the 

 migrations of such birds as feed on insects and flies are so 

 far regulated by rocky structure. Query — Is it possible to 

 classify such migrations on a geological basis 1 To return to 

 our Spotted Flycatcher : I have now to mention, in connec- 

 tion with the query just put, that I never saw the bird on a 

 stiff clayey bottom. It is common enough on light, sandy, 

 and especially gravelly soils. 



The Starling. — " When I was four or five years old," 

 says Sir Walter Scott in his Diary for 1830, as given in 

 Lockhart's Life of Scott, " I was staying at Lessudden Place, 

 " an old mansion, the abode of this Raeburn. A large 

 " pigeon-house was almost destroyed by starlings, then a 

 " conomon bird, though now seldom seen." This statement 

 by Scott, as to the prevalence of the Starling in that district 

 and its disappearance therefrom, corresponds exactly with 

 what my father used to teU me. When he was a boy in the 

 village of Bowden, which is mid-way between Abbotsford 

 and Lessudden, the Starlings were very numerous there, 

 several of them building every year in the gable of an old 

 barn belonging to our family. They left the place altogether ; 

 and during my own boyhood, the old bam being still there, 

 I never saw a starling about Bowden, or even in that quarter 

 of the country. Whether or not they are back to Bowden, 

 I cannot say ; but in autumn, last year, when I was on a 

 visit at Bridgeheugh, about a couple of miles from Abbots- 

 ford, I saw a large flock of them, packed close in the very 

 centre of a looser flock of rooks, making their way toward 

 the Sunderlandhall woods. In harmony with all this, as to 



