BIRDS OBSERVED AT DAVOS. 



25 



appeared. We found it, however, growing plentifully in the . 

 new tracks which had been made by the cattle." Mr. Williams 

 also describes another station in which the only part of the 

 footpath occupied by the plant was that along which cattle 

 were in the habit of passing to and from a farmyard. Here, 

 again, the land was reclaimed, and the soil was sandy and not 

 wet. Mr. Williams further remarks that the partiality of the 

 plant for cattle tracks suggests that cattle may be the means 

 of distributing the seed — a suggestion which Mr. Bennett does 

 not seem to favour, though he admits that there is " some 

 agency at work in the distribution of this plant not yet 

 accounted for." " The problem British botanists have to work 

 out," he says, " is whether ./uncus tenuis is an introduced 

 species, and, if so, how did it come 1 " 



The conditions under which this plant from Argyllshire was 

 found, while not throwing any new light on our existing know- 

 ledge, are interesting as being in many respects similar to those 

 under which plants from widely separated localities have been 

 discovered, and, at any rate, its occurrence in this district is an 

 addition to the rapidly accumulating data by which we hope 

 to get nearer a solution of the problem. 



List of Birds observed at op near Davos in the 

 Winter of 1901-02. 



By Johnstone Macfie, M.D. 



[Read 27th January, 1903.] 



Davos am Platz is situated in the Canton of the Orisons, 

 Switzerland, 1,560 metres above the level of the sea. Roughly 

 speaking, at Davos we are living about the level of the cairn 

 on Ben Nevis, and, although so many degrees south of that 

 point, the winter climate is severe — the country deeply covered 

 with snow, and the thermometer often showing from 30° to 40° 

 of frost, Fahrenheit. 



