MARCH 65 



Gaelic name of the island. There can be little doubt that 

 it would breed freely with the common wren (T. parvulus), 

 and the offspring would probably prove fertile, thereby 

 obliterating one of the barriers which separate species; 

 but at all events the St. Kilda wren is a distinct type 

 which ought not to be allowed to disappear. It is in 

 that distinction that the chief peril lurks, for the collector 

 can command fifty times the price for the egg of a 

 St. Kilda wren than any one would give for a common 

 wren's egg, and the price ever rises as the birds get 

 scarcer. A devastating raid was made upon the island 

 in the spring of 1903. Collectors swooped down and, it 

 is believed, grabbed every egg upon the island, besides 

 shooting the parent birds for the taxidermist. Twenty- 

 three eggs, probably the whole season's crop, were sold at 

 the above-mentioned auction for 2, 15s. 



It may be asked why the Inverness-shire County Council 

 did not intervene to stay the destruction ? The answer 

 is that, albeit St. Kilda is reckoned as part of Inverness- 

 shire, it was specially exempted from the provisions of 

 the Wild Birds Preservation Acts out of consideration 

 for the natives, who depend largely for their food-supply 

 upon sea-fowl breeding in their cliffs. It was permis- 

 sible, therefore, to take and sell all and sundry eggs that 

 might be found upon that ocean hermitage, and the 

 St. Kilda wren suffered with the rest from an unforeseen 

 cause. 



Now, although probably every nest on the main isle 

 of St. Kilda was ransacked in that raid of 1903, rough 

 weather made access impossible to an adjacent islet, 

 where a few pairs of wrens are believed to survive. 

 I conceived the chivalrous, or, as most persons may con- 

 E 



