Tux ZooLocist—Marcn, 1872. 2959 
since it was quite unknown. Mr. Hepburn, in referring to this fact, in a 
very interesting paper published by him in the ‘ Proceedings’ of the Ber- 
wickshire Naturalists’ Club for 1848, says :—‘ J am acquainted with a man, 
now sixty-five years of age, whose bird-nesting days were spent in the woods 
near Gifford, and he states that the wood pigeons were then so very rare 
that the discovery of a nest was looked upon as a great feat; and there are 
several people in the parish of Dirleton who remember haying gone to look 
at a wood pigeon feeding in a cottage garden during the long snow storm of 
1791.’ Mr. Hepburn also states that ‘the appearance and subsequent increase 
of the wood pigeon has followed the introduction of the clovers and turnip, 
and the extension of fir plantation, and all parties look upon these birds 
as the greatest curse to agriculture.’ It is remarkable that, after a lapse of 
twenty years, during which interval active measures have been used to keep 
down its numbers, this bird should still be regarded as a rapidly increasing 
pest, and an agricultural scourge of such magnitude as to bafile all attempts 
to bring about even a partial remedy. As a proof of the enormous flocks 
still to be found in East Lothian, which occupies but a limited area com- 
pared with other Scottish counties, I here give the particulars of the numbers 
kilied during the last eight years, under the auspices of the United East 
Lothian Agricultural Society, which have been obligingly furnished to me 
by the Society’s secretaries :— 
Year 1863 (including December, 1862) - = - 13,450 
3, 1864 - . - - - - - - - 15,289 
eon. = F - 2 : - - 5 : 29,141 
Seen 4s eee |. | AMOR TORY Sh Iwore coLpaay 
F i L867 = - = = - : 2 - 10,461 
Ppicooh viernes Ses ehaa (S12) ae peo 
REO kl AMM «| ~ Gee ts! vets: +. we 1BRe 
», 1870 (till 6th June only) - - > E - 10,788 
Total - - = - 180,440” 
But in spite of this tremendous slaughter, Mr. Gray reports that 
there is no diminution in the number of the birds. The murdered 
pigeons are replaced by migratory flocks from Norway, Denmark 
and Sweden, which settle in the country, and do not return again 
to the homes they had left. Mr. Gray himself witnessed an arrival 
of an immense flock of wood pigeons on the coast near Dunbar: 
“T had gone out about daybreak, and was astonished to see a prodigious 
cloud of pigeons fully a mile seawards, steering for the nearest land. The 
entire body of birds alighted on the sandy beach at Catcrag Bay, which they 
completely covered between the rocks near the limestone quarry and the 
opposite point in the direction of the town. I am satisfied there must have 
