The Summer Birds of Shetland. Te 
Laurenson, having mentioned it to me under the name of the 
little egret, I asked him to forward the remains. These were 
much dilapidated, the head and neck being completely gone, 
but its legs and feet, small size, and the fact of there being 
only ten tail feathers, showed it could be nothing else than 
Ardetta minuta. Mr J. E. Harting, to whom I submitted 
the specimen, confirmed my identification. This is the first 
time the little bittern has been recorded from Shetland, 
though Selby (“Illustrations of British Ornithology,” p. 36) 
records, from Dr Fleming, one killed at Sunda (Sanda), one 
of the Orkney islands, in 1805. 
VIII. Zhe Land and Fresh-Water Crustacea of the District 
around Edinburgh. By Tuomas Scort, F.LS., Naturalist 
to the Fishery Board for Scotland. 
(Read 15th April 1891.) 
In this and following papers I propose to give lists of the 
land and fresh-water Crustacea that have been obtained in 
the neighbourhood of Edinburgh and the surrounding district 
by myself, and by others so far as known to me. 
The proposed limits of the district which the lists will 
more particularly refer to are similar to those of the late 
Professor Balfour’s “Flora of Edinburgh”; but in respect 
of those species that are rare, or the known distribution of 
which in Scotland is limited to.a few places, I may add a 
more or less complete record of the localities where they are 
known to occur. Synonyms and short descriptions of species 
will also be given where it seems desirable to do so, in order 
to render the lists more generally useful. 
Although an endeavour will be made to include, as far as 
possible, all the species that have been observed within the 
proposed district, yet I am too well aware of the difficulty 
of obtaining full information of the records of the local land 
and fresh-water Crustacea that may have been published, 
to venture to assert that these lists will be exhaustive; but 
however defective they may be, if they contribute in any 
