464 piciD^. 



making of plantations, but on the other hand the greater 

 attention paid to forests and woods, by removing trees that 

 have attained their full gi-owth, without suffering them to 

 decay and harbour a world of insects, deprives it of much of 

 its sustenance, and to this cause, rather than any other, 

 seems due its increasing scarcity in some places. Yet it 

 breeds regularly, as Mr. More's enquiries shewed, in every 

 county as far as Derbyshire, though becoming much rarer 

 further to the northward, so as to occur but sporadically in 

 the remaining English counties. In Yorkshire, according 

 to Mr. W. E. Clarke, it is only found as a casual visitor 

 on the western side of the county, and in the rest is 

 chiefly confined to a few localities in the vales of York and 

 of Pickering — being wholly unknown, however, in Cawood, 

 one of the largest and oldest woods, near the junction of the 

 Wharfe and the Ouze. In Durham and Northumberland it 

 seems to breed but occasionally, though at Dilston Park in 

 the latter said Wallis, writing in 1769 (Nat. Hist. Northumb. 

 i. p. 319), it was frequent before the wood was cut down. 

 To Scotland in these days the species is a very rare strag- 

 gler.* Neither Jardine nor Macgillivray knew of an authen- 

 tic Scottish specimen, and Mr. Gray says he has never seen 

 one recently killed. According to the last there is no proof 

 of the appearance of more than four examples in Scotland — 

 one killed near Jedburgh in 1848, one killed near Aberdeen, 

 one seen in 1868 near Tillery in the same county, and a 

 Sutherland specimen in the Dunrobin Museum. Messrs. 

 Baikie and Heddle say that they had heard of one or two 

 obtained in Orkney. Thompson at first utterly disbelieved 

 in its occurrence in Ireland, though subsequently admitting 

 (App. p. 441) a note by Montgomery to the efi"ect that one 

 was captured in the county of Longford ; but Mr. Watters 

 says that a specimen in his collection was shot in the county 

 of Kildare, September 29th, 1847. 



* Sibbald, in 1614, particularized a ^' Picus virklis" as pne of the tliree 

 species of " Picus Martius" (as he, with most old writers, called all birds that 

 climbed trees) found in thatkingdom, the other two being " Picus varius minor'' 

 and "Pints cinereus" (Hist. Anira. Scot. p. 15). The evidence of Pennant, Don 

 and Fleming is very slight, and the statement of Selby is known to be erroneous. 



