INTRODUCTORY 



CONSIDERING the number of local faunas already issued, it seems 

 not a little curious that Orkney should have been so long left to 

 take care of itself, there having been no attempt made to write a 

 Fauna of the whole group, since Messrs. Baikie and Heddle's work 

 appeared in 1848. And this is the stranger, as islands generally 

 possess, for the naturalist, a greater interest 'than a mainland. 

 Certainly there are articles in several of the Natural History maga- 

 zines which bear on the subject, and we ourselves wrote a paper on 

 the Mammals and Birds of Eousay, 1 the result of a nine months' 

 residence on that island. But all these are isolated cases, and 

 require collecting and revising before they can be brought into a 

 " harmonious whole." The Zoologist, Field, and Land and Water, 

 contain numberless references to the capture of rare visitants, but 

 the want of a good index to the first named, and the comparative 

 inaccessibility of the two latter, render the work of collecting 

 these records almost impossible ; but such notices as we have been 

 able to cull from them will be found under the species to which 

 they refer. 



Eeaders of our book need not expect much in the way of novelty, 

 even possibly there may not be much of interest, as local faunas 

 must, to a large extent, be repetitions of each other : still we trust 

 it will be a solid link in the chain, and we have done our best to 

 make the information as accurate as possible. 



With a few exceptions, we have personally visited every island 

 of the group. By this we do not wish it to be imagined that such 

 a casual survey makes us complete authorities on the fauna of each 

 individual island, but it has enabled us to form a very good idea of 

 it as a whole. Our numerous correspondents, both residents and 

 visitors, have most ably assisted us, and enabled us to arrive at 

 what we trust will be found a very fair if not thoroughly exhaus- 



1 Proc. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glasgow, vol. i. New Series, pp. 44 et seq. 



