1 88 1 -82.] Edinburgh Naturalists' Field Club. 9 



in September. They are so very local in their habits that they are 

 seldom seen more than about 200 yards from their nesting-place. 

 An instance of this peculiar habit may be observed in the Dean 

 Cemetery, where they breed regularly. You may go to the eastern 

 part of the cemetery again and again and never see them ; but 

 within a hundred yards of the western entrance they are always to 

 be found in the summer months, and their sharp staccato note 

 greets you there at once. As far back as my memory extends, 

 I have been a close observer of the habits of these interesting 

 summer migrants ; for when I was a child, a pair of Flycatchers had 

 their nest year after year in the same branch of a Banksian Eose 

 trained round my bedroom window, and I am quite convinced that 

 the same birds or their young return annually to the same spot for 

 nidification, and somehow there is always associated in my mind 

 with these favourite birds the rich perfume from the clusters of 

 white bloom of the Banksian Kose. 



My principal object in writing these remarks on the Flycatcher 

 is to contradict in the most emphatic manner an editorial note to a 

 popular edition of White's ' Selborne,' where this very useful bird 

 is most unjustly libelled as a destroyer of Bees ; and I much fear 

 the erroneous impression conveyed by this note has been the death 

 of many a poor innocent Flycatcher. I had frequently observed 

 the birds follow a Bee, seize it, and then settle on the gravel walk 

 and beat it to death ; but I felt sure the bird with its short beak 

 dare not do this to a worker Bee on account of its sting, and that it 

 must be feeding on the stingless drones — and I determined to 

 ascertain this fact beyond the possibility of doubt. So the next time 

 I saw the bird thus occupied, immediately it settled on the walk I 

 threw a clod of earth and made it relinquish its prey. This I did 

 at various times, and always with the same result — viz., that, as I 

 expected, the insect was invariably a drone, and not a worker Bee. 

 Now the time when the Flycatchers require these fat drones for 

 their young is after the swarming season is over, and then the 

 workers themselves are turning out and destroying the drones, 

 which are no longer necessary in the economy of the hive ; and 

 therefore the birds are assisting the workers instead of destroying 

 them, and are consequently friends, and not enemies, to the bee- 

 keeper. I need scarcely mention that now, 20th October, there 

 are no drones in our bee-hives. 



Men should hesitate before publishing as facts in Natural History 

 the results of superficial and careless observation. If the writer 

 above referred to had reasoned on the improbability of a short- 

 billed bird catching stinging Bees with impunity, and followed up 

 his investigations, he would not have promulgated this erroneous 

 statement, which, I have no doubt, has been copied into other 

 works. I once saw a Sparrow take a drone from the landing-board 



