Bibliographical Notices. 241 



fur of the mouse, and the Rook the husk of the oat. No mention is 

 made of the curious sexual note of the male Lapwing in the breeding 

 season, which resembles the alarm-note of the Missel Thrush, but is 

 uttered in a more abrupt and broken manner. The breeding of the 

 Woodcock in Britain no longer excites great interest : in the excellent 

 communications quoted by our author from the field notes of the Rev. 

 Mr. Smith of Monquhitter and Mr. Burnet of Kembay, many inter- 

 esting points in its history are pleasingly illustrated. The identity 

 of the beautiful White Egret, shot at Tyningham, East Lothian, in 

 1840, with E[iretta nigrirostris of C. L. Bonaparte, is still undeter- 

 mined, and unfortunately no British locahties are given for Eyretta 

 alba. 



The fact that a female Shoveller, lihynchaspis dypeata, wp.g 

 killed in Gullane Loch in July 1828, as recorded in vol. iv. of Sir 

 W. Jardi lie's ' British Birds,' has been overlooked ; else the author 

 would not have stated, that " in Scotland no authentic instance of its 

 occurring at any season has come to my knowledge." It would 

 appear that a very large proportion of the Divers, Mergansers, Golden- 

 eyed Garrots, and Wigeons, killed in winter, in the south of Scotland 

 and in England, are females and young birds. The claims of the 

 Bridled Guillemot, TJria lacrymans, to rank as a species are still 

 matter of dispute ; but we have here a description of a young bird, 

 and it would appear that the white ring encirchng the eye is not 

 peculiar to the old bird as was supposed. The young of the Solan 

 Goose, and all our larger Gulls require three years to attain their 

 perfect plumage, and yet immature birds do not frequent our shores 

 in numbers proportional to their annual increase ; they are still more 

 rare in the breeding localities, and in no instance has an immature 

 bird been found paired with an adult. The habits of our larger 

 Gulls — the cries of both adults and young — and the comparative 

 scarcity of the latter, ar€ pleasingly given in the account of the Black- 

 headed Gull, as an important member of the vast congregation of sea 

 birds which assembled to feed on young herrings in the Firth of 

 Forth above Queensferry in December 1837. We are aware that 

 Audubon found, that the young of many species of both land and water 

 birds, in America, migrated during the cold season to a much lower 

 latitude than their parents, and we have seen, that as respects some 

 ol" our water-birds whose summer haunts are in the Arctic regions, 

 the same fact is observable with us. A more intimate acquaintance 

 with the fauna of the Iberian peninsula and the north of Africa may 

 lead to the discovery of analogous facts in European ornithology ; and 

 the question as to the residence of the immature Solan Geese and 

 larger Gulls, can be settled by voyagers in the Mediterranean and 

 adjacent sea. 



Our limited space compels us to give only few extracts illustrative 

 of our author's style in describing the habits of his favourites : — ' 



" Beautiful are those green woods that hang upon the craggy sides 

 of the fern-clad hills, where the Heath-fowl threads its way among the 

 tufts of brown heath, and the Cuckoo sings his ever-pleasing notes as 

 he balances himself on the gray stone, vibrating his fan-like tail. 



Ann. S^ Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vul.sx. 16 



