884 The Zoologist— September, 1867. 



bears, and remark of one of great strength and ferocity, " That can be 

 no Christian bear." One killed at Ofoden, which had slain six men 

 and sixty horses, was said to have borne the infallible sign of a trans- 

 formed sorcerer, viz. a belt of bear-skin round its loins {Dasent). An 

 old belief, which has become proverbial, relates that the young of the 

 bear are born in an undeveloped state and licked into shape by their 

 parent. Another popular and wide-spread fancy is that the bear lives 

 in winter by sucking his paws, in explanation of which Mr. Loyd 

 remarks that the animal is very partial to licking the balls of its feet, 

 which at that time acquire a new cuticle. 



Otter. — A strange belief regarding a spotted variety of the otter is 

 said by Professor Bell to prevail in some parts of Scotland, namely, 

 that it is never killed without a human being dying at the same 

 moment: I have never myself met either with the variety or the super- 

 stition. It used to be a moot question whether the otter was beast or 

 fish : to this Isaac Walton alludes, in a well-known passage of his 

 'Compleat Angler,' where he also makes his Huntsman speak as 

 follows: — "And I can tell you that this dog-fisher, for so the Latins 

 call him, can smell a fish in the water a hundred yards from him ; 

 Gesner says much farther; and that his stones are good against the 

 falling sickness, and that there is a herb, Benione, which beiug hung 

 in a linen cloth near a fish-pond or any haunt that he uses, doth make 

 him to avoid the place, which proves he smells both by water and 

 land." 



Edward R. Alston. 



Stockbriggs, Lesmahagow, N. B., 

 August 2, 1867. 



(To be continued.) 



Collected Observations on the Birds of Stirlingshire. 

 By John A. Harvie Brown. 



Golden Eagle. — The golden eagle is now a rara avis in Stirling- 

 shire, though not a great many years ago it used to circle round Ben 

 Lomond, and place its eyrie among its cliffs. No longer ago than the 

 close of the last century a pair of golden eagles bred in some pre- 

 cipitous cliffs near Campsil. Mr. R. Gray says that it still breeds in 

 Stirlingshire (see Mr. A. G. More's paper on the " Distribution of 

 British Birds during the Nesting Season," in the ' Ibis '). One was 

 shot in this county ou Loch Lomond, by the gamekeeper of Sir James 



