37 Alexander Goodman More. [i892 



CHAPTER L. 



AN ANXIOUS YEAR. 



[1892.] 



A SYMPTOM of the improved health which he had for some- 

 time enjoyed appears in the unusually large number of 

 notes and short articles which he contributed, during the 

 earlier part of 1892, to various journals. An article on the 

 " Alleged former Nesting of the Osprey in the English 

 Lake District," in which he maintained that the Sea Eagle 

 was probably the bird noticed as " Osprey " by early 

 writers, appeared in the " Zoologist " for January. To the 

 Journal of Botany, the same month, he contributed a note 

 on the Lesser Dodder (Cuscuta epithymum) as an Irish 

 plant; to the " Zoologist" for February, one on the 

 "Parrot Crossbill" in Ireland; to the Journal of Botany 

 for March, notes on Trichomanes radicans (the " Killarney 

 Fern ") in Spain, Silene maritima growing inland, and 

 Vaccinium vitis-idaea (cow-berry) at low levels. In April 

 appeared the first number of " The Irish Naturalist," where 

 first place was given to his article on " Recent Additions 

 to the List of Irish Birds." It is curious to notice that in 

 this, which was practically speaking his latest ornithological 

 paper, he pauses to lay stress on the identical feature to 

 which he had drawn attention in what may be called his 

 earliest namely, the westward, rather than southward, 

 course apparently pursued by many of the winter bird- 

 visitors to the British islands. Of the Lesser Whitethroat 

 (obtained in Kerry, in October, 1890), he says : 



This is a striking example of a bird breeding freely in many parts of 

 England, extending northwards to the south of Scotland, but which up 

 to the present time has not even appeared as a rare visitor in Ireland. 

 Like the Nightingale (of which also there is only a single occurrence 

 recorded in Ireland), the Reed Warbler and Tree-Pipit, as well as the 

 Lesser Whitethroat, seem, during the autumnal migration, to find a 



