160 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



A summer visitor, but is seldom met with in the district (^4 

 Guide to Loch Lomond and Neighbourhood: "Birds," by- 

 James Lumsden, 1895). 



One shot, North Ronaldshay, 18bh September 1896 (A. Briggs, 

 Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., 1897, p. 160). 



In addition to this published information, I have been 

 favoured with the following notes by my friend Mr William 

 Evans : — 



" During all the years that I have paid attention to the 

 birds of the ' Forth ' district of Scotland, I have never, except, 

 perhaps, on one occasion, met with the Lesser Whitethroat ; 

 and no specimen, so far as I know, has ever been procured 

 in this part of the country. The occasion referred to was on 

 15th May 1886, at the Temple end of Arniston Glen, when 

 my attention was arrested by a bird which at the time I felt 

 certain was a Lesser Whitethroat ; but it was so shy that, try 

 as I liked, I could not succeed in getting a perfectly satis- 

 factory view of it. As a passing migrant I have no doubt 

 the species occurs occasionally on the seaward portions 

 of East Lothian and Fife ; and, were a trained observer 

 stationed at the Isle of May, it would almost certainly be 

 detected there within a very few years. I very much doubt, 

 however, if it is a summer visitor to any part of the district 

 at the present day. From what Macgillivray wrote sixty 

 years ago, it seems probable that a few pairs occasionally 

 spent the summer in the Lothians at that time — indeed, his 

 description of the nest and one of the eggs sent to him 

 in June 1839 by Mr Durham Weir, from Linlithgowshire, 

 together with Weir's own account of the birds and their nest 

 ('British Birds,' vol. iii. pp. 729-731), leaves little room for 

 doubt in the matter. As regards Mr A. Hepburn's East 

 Lothian record, also given in Macgillivray's book, I may 

 state that I had some correspondence with Mr Hepburn on 

 the subject in March 1894, when he informed me that he 

 observed the birds for two seasons only, viz., 1838 and 1839 ; 

 that no specimen was obtained ; and that Mr Weir told him 

 in 1852 that he had never met with the birds in his neigh- 

 bourhood after 1839. Mr Hepburn, it may be added, left 



