id 
LITTLE AUKS IN WEST OF SCOTLAND IN 1894-5. 197 
with Loch Linnhe would naturally lead any that had got cornered 
in the Moray Firth down to Oban, where a “good percentage” of 
those passing through the hands of Mr. Bisshopp there were found, 
and Islay being in the same line of flight, it is natural that in that 
island they should have been frequent, as it would be a kind of 
Ultima Thule to them. It is significant that Messrs. M‘Leay & 
Son, Inverness, got 60 birds for preservation, a number almost 
equalling that of all the taxidermists in the south-west together. 
Further, about 20 per cent of those coming to Glasgow for 
preservation were from the east. 
Turning now to the southern part of our area, to Renfrewshire 
and Ayrshire, the occurrences there were few. Thus, besides the 
three at Gourock previously mentioned, I have only another in 
the former county, on the borders of Mearns Parish; where one 
which flew off Balgray Dam was captured on the road which 
skirts it on the north by a carter, and kept alive for several days. 
With regard to Renfrewshire also, Mr. Clymie, of Greenock, 
informs me that none have reached him for preservation this 
winter. 
In Ayrshire one was got at Dalry, in the first week in February, 
and sent to Mr. Eaton, Kilmarnock, for preservation, and another 
was found on the shore at Ayr by Mr. W. C. S. Fergusson. The 
latter gentleman kindly took the trouble to interrogate all those 
in Ayr who take in birds for preservation regarding the Little 
Auk, but without result. A visit I paid to the shore below Ayr, on 
lst January, yielded nothing : this was nine days after the great 
storm. Mr. Chas. Berry, the naturalist of Lendalfoot, informs 
me he has not seen one this year. 
The salient features of their occurrence in the west, then, are 
their almost total absence from the Outer Hebrides and north- 
west coast (provided the information from a district so sparsely 
peopled, and with such an enormous coast-line, can be relied on as 
conclusive); also their absence from Ayrshire; their greatest 
frequency in the west, in the line of the Great Glen, from Oban 
to Islay ; their scattered occurrence in the Clyde area, probably 
attributable in part to some having been blown across country 
directly from the east coast, the remainder being an overflow 
from the stream assumed to have come down the Great Glen to 
the Inner Hebrides, 
