OSPREYS 257 



the gulf below. This piece of discipline was enacted 

 twice. I give this under all reserve, as the osprey 

 would not strike anything but fish, except from 

 pugnacity. I did not see these birds to identify 

 them as ospreys, but the description given to me, 

 of birds like large hawks, dark brown above and 

 light-coloured below, hardly admits of any doubt 

 as to what they were. 



When Sir William Jardine wrote his notes to 

 Wilson's Birds of America, he said that a pair or two 

 of ospreys might be found about most of the High- 

 land lakes, and he mentions Loch Lomond, Loch 

 Awe, and the Lake of Menteith as regular stations. 

 Later, in 1848, Charles St. John found several eyries 

 in Sutherlandshire ; indeed, some of the few un- 

 pleasant pages in his delightful books are taken up 

 with description of how he and Dunbar shot several 

 pairs of old birds in the breeding season. At the 

 present day, it is believed, there are only two lochs 

 in the Highlands where ospreys are permitted to 

 rear their young. Of course it would not be safe 

 to mention these, but I have the satisfaction of 

 recording that on one of them, well known to me, 

 where there has been an eyrie from time im- 

 memorial, this year (1896), for the first time in 



