President's Address. 5 



old rules of the Church seals, otters, whales, porpoises, and 

 all cetacea and amphibia, are classed as fish. We need not 

 wonder at this, when we remember that the flesh of the seal 

 found its way even to royal tables. " So late as the reigns of 

 the Jameses the clerk of the kitchen sometimes notes among 

 the contents of the royal larder, with other strange food, 

 dimidmm pJiocce — a side of seal." 



There are some notices in Adamnan's " Life of St Col- 

 umba " which help us to picture, in very faint outlines, no 

 doubt, the notions of nature current among the leaders of 

 thought in those early days. Adamnan's work seems to 

 have been written in the last decade of the seventh century ; 

 yet notices occur in it which shed some light on recent 

 observations. Here is a case in point : In Thompson's 

 " Natural History of Ireland," vol. ii., p. 131, after a quota- 

 tion from Giraldus as to flocks of cranes (Grits cinerea) 

 numbering a hundred, being frequently seen, it is added : " If 

 the bird meant by Giraldus w^ere the true crane, and not the 

 heron, which is commonly called by that name in Ireland at 

 the present day, the stately bird would seem to have been once 

 as common here as it was in early times in Ireland." I think 

 the way in which this bird is referred to shows that it was the 

 crane, and not the heron. In Ireland it is now a very rare 

 visitant. Now, in Adamnan's Life we are introduced to the 

 Saint prophesying the arrival of a crane three days later, on 

 the western side of Hy or lona, from the north of Ireland {de 

 aquilonali Hibernim regione), weary and fatigued, having been 

 long driven about by various winds. The winged stranger 

 arrived, and, after a rest of three days, betook itself back to 

 Ireland. We may discard the prophecy, as no more than the 

 setting in which a true observation was placed, and then the 

 incident gives weight to the statement of Giraldus. Again, 

 the Saint visits Skye {Scia insida), and enters a dark forest, 

 where he meets a wild boar. Again, when, having to cross 

 the Ness near its mouth, he hears that the place at the time 

 gave shelter to a huge monster, which had slain a man when 

 attempting to swim across. Had a shark found its way to 

 the firth ? In the same narrative you get glimpses of salmon- 

 fishing in river and loch — the pre-Waltonians landing occa- 



