BIRD-ASSOCIATIONS IN SCOTLAND 55 
ASSOCIATIONS OF ARABLE LAND. 
The associations hitherto dealt with have been either 
primitive or else only indirectly influenced by the hand 
of man. We now come to an area of which the whole 
vegetative aspect and even soil-character have undergone 
radical alteration. If from the historical point of view 
the avifauna of such artificial areas has little value, it is 
yet not without special interest from other points of view. 
There are as yet no signs that civilisation has been out- 
grown, and we have to reckon on an ever-increasing and 
more extensive alteration of the face of the country. Such 
being the case, those birds which possess sufficient versatility 
to adapt themselves to the altered circumstances, have a 
special interest for us, even if their numbers be few. 
In arable land such as we have in the richer and more 
intensively cultivated parts of the Lowlands, with its wide 
smooth fields bordered by stone walls or low-cut hedges, 
bird-life is at a very low level of variety, equalled only by 
the most barren primitive areas. In population-density, 
however, things are much better, thanks to the super- 
dominance of one particular species. A common crop- 
rotation of the Lothians is a four-shift one: green crop, 
white crop, one year’s hay, white crop; the principal crops 
grown being wheat, oats, barley, rye-grass, potatoes, turnips. 
Except as regards one or two species, the alternation of 
crops has surprisingly little effect on the avifauna. 
The typical avifauna is: Skylark, dominant; Lapwing, 
locally sub-dominant ; Partridge, plentiful ; Corn-crake and 
Corn-bunting, rather scarce. These are affected by the crop- 
rotation as follows: The Corncrake is absolutely, or almost 
absolutely, confined to the hay-fields. In a discussion which 
recently ran through the pages of the Zoologist, on the 
striking decrease, amounting in some places to extermina- 
tion, of the Corncrake in the south of England, it was 
ingeniously suggested by one writer that the Corncrake, 
originally an inhabitant of the corn-fields (as its name indeed 
suggests), was driven out by the adoption of the drill in 
place of the older method of broad-cast sowing. The 
