DECEMBER 273 



me an interesting note about the way the shrikes in 

 new lands avail themselves of the resources of civilisa- 

 tion. He does not mention what species of butcher-bird 

 is common in this colony, but there can be no scarcity 

 of thorns whereon they may impale their prey after the 

 hereditary manner of their kind, seeing how greatly that 

 land abounds in spiney growths. But butcher-birds 

 are not unreasonably conservative. Being intelligent 

 creatures, they have shown their readiness to move 

 with the times, and evidently regard the hundreds of 

 leagues of barbed wire which have overspread the colony 

 as a device specially contrived for their convenience. 

 Instead, therefore, of troubling themselves to hunt 

 out a suitable tree, they choose the top strand of a 

 barb-wire fence for a larder, and you may see a variety 

 of delicacies impaled in a long row upon the points 

 frogs, lizards, beetles, small snakes, young birds, mice, 

 and suchlike. 



LXVII 



I have prosed before now in these notes on the 

 subject of the two larches at the west end of 

 Dunkeld Cathedral, noble monuments to the 

 silvicultural ardour of the second Duke of Atholl. It is 

 with sorrow that I here have to record that one of the 

 pair reputed as the first larches rooted in Scotland 

 has been killed by lightning (1907), having attained 

 the age of one hundred and seventy years or thereby. 

 It is well known that the said Duke was so well pleased 

 with the growth made by these new trees that before 

 s 



