THE ZooLoGisT—MArcH, 1872. 2957 
Syotices of Sot Pooks. 
Birds of the West of Scotland, including the Outer Hebrides. 
By Rozert Gray. Pp. 520, with 15 lithographic illustrations. 
Glasgow: Thomas Murray and Son. 
WE are fresh from reading Mr. Gray’s most interesting book on 
the Birds of the West of Scotland, a work which in our estimation 
should have a place on every naturalist’s bookshelf side by side 
with his Stevenson and his Yarrell. Every page in it proclaims that 
the study of birds has been the writer’s pursuit all his life-time, and 
that a quick and intelligent observation has been brought to bear 
upon the habits of his favourites. There will be many a Southron 
ornithologist who will be disposed to envy Mr. Gray in his having 
seen the golden eagle, the greenshank, the blackthroated diver, and 
that fairy little bird, the rednecked phalarope, in their breeding 
haunts ; and it was to see what he had to say about these northern 
birds that we turned instinctively, when the ‘ Birds of Western 
Scotland’ first reached us from our bookseller. It is no wonder 
that both the golden and the whitetailed eagle should be fast 
becoming rare objects even in the wildest and bleakest districts of 
the Highlands, after the tremendous slaughter which they have 
experienced for the last twenty years from the preservers of game. 
Mr. Gray tells us many a sad tale of eagle-murder, and his lists of 
the noble victims excite our indignation. On one farm in Skye 
sixty-five eagles were destroyed within a few years; three only 
were golden eagles. In Sutherlandshire (as Mr. Gray was informed 
by Mr. Harvie Brown) one person in the short space of three weeks 
killed stateen adult golden eagles and sea eagles. And again, 
“During the last nine years a keeper in Skye has shot jfi/ty-seven 
eagles on a single estate.” And a keeper in Ross-shire confessed 
that during twelve years he had shot no less than fifty-two eagles, 
besides taking numbers of both eggs and young. Iu many parts 
of Scotland landed proprietors are now endeavouring to protect the 
few surviving eagles, but it is probable that they will fail in pre- 
serving these much-persecuted birds; for even if the keeper’s gun 
be no longer pointed at them, the shepherds are not likely to resist 
the large sums which are now offered by collectors for eagles’ eggs. 
The writer of this has travelled much in the Scotch Highlands, but, 
SECOND SERIES—VOL. VII. M 
