184 On the Effects of the Hurricane of Jan. 7, 1839. 



from the north-west to the south-west, that some of them had been 

 blown from the Atlantic*, almost entirely across the island, a cir- 

 cumstance which, strange as it may appear, is less singular than the 

 occurrence of these birds on a more ordinary occasion in the very 

 centre of England t- 



Of the great northern diver {Colymbus glacialis), a species which 

 naturally keeps far out from the shore, I saw a specimen in Dublin, 

 that was shot in a dock at Ringsend near that city, after the subsi- 

 dence of the hurricane. 



In a letter from Viscount Cole, dated Hazelwood, Jan. 14, 1839, 

 is the following passage — " I mention underneath a curious fact 

 hardly to be believed, but which two decent men would testify by 

 affidavit — that on the morning after the hurricane a great quantity 

 of perch J fry were found thrown up high and dry two yards, and 

 some more, on the grassy shore of Church Island in Lough Gill or 

 Hazelwood Lake, in the county of Sligo." In a note with which I 

 was subsequently favoured. Lord Cole remarked, that he had "heard" 

 of several roach || being thrown up on an island in Lough Earn on 

 the night of the great storm. On the 24th of January, Robert Ball, 

 Esq. wrote me from Dublin to the eifect — that after the late hurricane 

 the dead bodies of rooks § to the amazing number of 33,000 (as a 

 matter of curiosity the number was reckoned by some boys) were 

 picked up on the shores of a lake some miles in extent and with ex- 

 tensive rookeries on its borders, in the county of Westmeath ; and 

 that in the same locality numbers of perch were thrown to some 

 distance into the fields. The almost incredible mortality of rooks 

 induced me to make further inquiry, when I was informed that 

 Dean Vignolles (on whose property the circumstance occurred), 

 states that the number of these birds above-mentioned were cer- 

 tainly destroyed. This gentleman likewise submitted to Mr. Ball's 

 inspection a more than ordinarily strong panel of a new window 

 shutter which was driven in and broken through by a rook dash- 

 ing, or perhaps rather from being dashed against it on the night in 



* At all times of the year they are met with off the western and northern 

 coasts — they breed in a few of the islands, from Tory in the north, to the 

 Skeligs in the south, inclusive. 



t In the Magazine of Natural History for 1832, (p. 283.) two petrels are 

 recorded to have been found dead at Birmingham in December 1831 ; one 

 was discovered in a street of the town, the other at a few miles distance. 

 The Rev. Mv. Bree of Allesly, who saw the former specimen in Weaver's 

 Museum, has informed us that it is the Fork-tailed species, T. Bullockii — 

 loc. cit. p. 733. X Perca fuviatUis. 



II The fii^h so called in Ireland is the rudd, Leuciscus enjthi-ophtlialmiis. 



§ Corvas frugilegus. 



