60 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Wanton destruction of Animal Life in Shetland. — The 'Shetland 

 Times' for the 12th January last contains the following mischievous 

 advertisement : — 



"Destkuction of Vermin. — Mr. Urquhart will pay tlie imdemoted prices for 

 Vermin brought to him : — Is. for every Gyr or Peregrine Falcon, Usprey, Buzzard, 

 Kite or Hobby; OJ. for every Black-backed Gull, Eaven, Merlin, and every species 

 of Hawk and Harrier; 3d. for every Hoody Crow; 6d. for every Weasel. 



By order of Committee of Commissioners of Supply. 



Lerwick, 12th January, 1884." 



If it is not too late to protest against such wholesale slaughter, we 

 would urge some of our northern correspondents to exert their iniluence to 

 avert the blow which seems destined to fall upon the fauna of Shetland. 

 If the fate of the ahove-namcd animals is sealed, then it is, perhaps, as well 

 tliat Dunn's 'Ornitliologist's Guide' and Saxby's 'Birds of Shetland' should 

 have been written while the island still had a fauna of its own. 



Method in recording Observations.— In sending you the record of a 

 specimen of the Little Gull, Larus minutus, observed in Scotland, I wish 

 particularly to direct the attention of British ornithologists to the necessity 

 now-a-days of recording sucli occurrences on some methodical plan, as all 

 sucli records have direct and often most valuable bearing upon the causes 

 and reasons of migratorial phenomena. I have an idea that if the pro- 

 prietor of 'The Zoologist' would issue to his principal ornithological 

 contributors a printed form for such records, to ensure uniformity, each 

 single sheet being intended to contain full particulars of each separate 

 occurrence or group of occurrences, a very great and very useful assistance 

 would be rendered to students of migration generally, and to our British 

 Association Committee in particular. The Americans have taken up the 

 subject keenly, and you may depend upon it they will not be long before 

 they have some such uniform method for recording issued to hundreds of 

 collectors and contributors over the whole States and Canada. I am in 

 correspondence with Mr. Merriam, the Secretary of the Migration Com- 

 mittee of the American Ornithologists' Union, and he means work. If 

 Mr. Newman sees the advantage of the above suggestion, let it be begun 

 with a New Year, and issue to those desiring forms along with the January 

 or February number of ' The Zoologist.' These forms could be supplied 

 gratis singly, or to order in blocks or with counterfoil, for the recorder's 

 own use, in lots of ten, twenty, thirty, or more. At the end of the year 

 each recording ornithologist would have a complete list of all occurrences 

 in his own district on his counterfoil, and the Editor of 'The Zoologist' 



