86 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 
coast of Greenland had been cleared of their herds of 
Walruses. 
Both to the east and the west the breeding-grounds 
nearest to the British Isles were depleted of their stock in 
the years about 1860-70, and at the same time a marked 
decrease took place in the frequency of the visits of the 
Walrus to our shores. The sudden diminution in the 
numbers of visits seems to be directly traceable to the 
driving northwards of the herds, which about the years 
1860-70 seriously reduced their numbers or carried them 
beyond the critical area whence the British Isles drew the 
majority of their chance visitors. 
There is little likelihood that the visits will ever again 
increase in frequency, for the slaughter continued after those 
critical years, so that even in 1879 (/eld, 27th March 1880) 
“about 11,000 Walruses were secured, most of them within 
the Arctic Sea [including the Pacific region]. But to attain 
this result, between thirty and forty thousand animals were 
killed, so that only one-third of the number destroyed were 
actually utilised.” The increased value of their products 
would indicate that the Walruses’ only safeguards from 
extermination are such paucity of numbers and inaccessi- 
bility of breeding-grounds as to make their pursuit and 
destruction unremunerative. 
The Marsh Titmouse in Berwickshire.—While I looked 
at the wildfowl on the lake at Duns Castle on the 25th of January 
last, a foraging party of Tits appeared, and some of the birds 
came into the clump of bushes close to where I was standing. 
My attention was attracted by the “tay tay” of a Marsh Tit, 
and when I was attempting to get the bird into the focus of my 
binoculars, it left the bush to pick seeds from the head of a 
plume thistle growing close to the bush, and within four feet of 
me. I had a most excellent view of the bird as it flew from 
the bush to the thistle three times, and I was particularly struck 
to observe that the head was glossy black, and not dull as in the 
Willow Tit. As the status of the Marsh Tit as a Scottish bird 
has not been defined since the Willow Tit was recognised as a 
British bird, it may be of interest to note this occurrence.— 
T. G. Larpiaw, Duns. 
