32 APPENDIX: NOS. XXXII.—XXXIII. 
I was always too late, as it crossed a narrow arm of the sea usually 
towards the middle of the day, or after having been disturbed. It 
frequented an isthmus of good pasture-land, called Hillswick Ness, 
on the west of the Mainland, not very far from Ronas Hill. What 
its usual food was I do not know: the people about thought it 
grazed like a Goose; but when first seen, some six or eight weeks 
before I was there, it was at the carcass of a sheep, and it flew 
several times round the head of the boy who disturbed it, screaming 
and frightening bim much. Curiously enough, when last seen, it 
was also “ pecking the body of a dead sheep.” This was on the 
13th of October, moon full, as Mr. Gideon Anderson, the laird of 
Hillswick, has kmdly informed me. A stay of so rare a visitor three 
or four months in the same neighbourhood is very interesting : if it 
were to return another year with a mate it would be still more so. 
Willughby’s authority, and the old law against taking their eggs, are 
conclusive as to the fact of their formerly frequenting the Cambridge- 
shire fens and breeding in this country. Several years since one 
was shot in the island of South Ronaldsha, in the Orkneys, and 
one or two instances are recorded of its visiting Shetland. The 
people about had exaggerated stories of the great bird that had 
appeared at Hillswick. Many had seen it, yet from their descriptions 
1 had some doubt whether it was a Bustard or a Crane: one man 
had been near enough to see the red about the head. 
3 Roxburgh Terrace, Edinburgh, 
November 1848. 
KK OT. 
On THE VIPER SWALLOWING ITs YOUNG. 
[‘ Zoologist,’ vil. (1849) pp, 2855, 2356.] 
Mr. Percivat’s interesting note (Zool. 2305) on this subject * reminds 
me of a very similar anecdote, told to me several years ago by a 
gentleman who is an accurate observer, and who has had long 
experience in all kinds of field sports. He one day shot a Viper, 
aud almost immediately afterwards it was surrounded by young ones, 
in what appeared to him the most mysterious manner. But here the 
grand link was wanting, which Mr. Percival has supplied,—the 
young ones were not seen to come out of their mother’s mouth. 
I may be allowed to mention an anecdote, told to me in 1842, by an 
1 (Mr. Percival stated that ‘though the evidence was scarcely as conclusive as 
might be wished,” he saw five or six young Vipers wriggling round the body 
of their recently killed mother, and one “making its way out of her mouth.” 
Mr. Wolley’s acceptance of the story was very unlike his usual caution in such 
matters, and I venture to think that it would not have been so readily, if at all, 
accorded in his later years.—ED.] > 
