130 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



fifty years past: the wind when at its strongest blew from the 

 N.N.W., afterwards veering round to W.S.W., scattering hay- and 

 corn-stacks in all directions, uprooting large trees, stripping 

 others of all their branches, leaving only the naked boles standing, 

 and breaking short-off some eight or ten feet from the ground fir- 

 trees of fifteen and sixteen inches in diameter. 



After this gale subsided, we had a continuance of high winds 

 all through the month and up to the 26th of November, when 

 another terrific gale from the S.W. set in, and, as it held longer 

 when at its height than the October gale, the damage it caused 

 throughout the country was far more serious ; for the farmers' 

 and cottiers' houses were stripped of thatch and slates in all 

 directions, many completely unroofed, and in some instances the 

 walls were levelled to the ground by the fury of the storm. 

 Along the coast the destruction of fishing-boats was greater than 

 ever before known, for, although drawn up ashore, many were 

 blown into the sea and lost ; in other cases they were so knocked 

 about by the wind as to be totally wrecked in the fields into 

 which they had been blown by the gale. During the gale of the 

 14th of October the mercury in a Fitzroy barometer fell from 

 30-1° to 29-1°, and on the night of the 26th of November from 

 29"3° to 28'3°. Although these high winds blew from an easterly 

 direction the first week of October, and for the last two weeks of 

 that month also, — so very favourable for the flight of our winter 

 visitors, — yet birds of all species, including game and wildfowl, 

 were never so scarce in this locality ; and I have had a similar 

 account from those great wildfowl haunts of the Lower Shannon 

 and Tralee Bay, which state of things goes far to prove that the 

 effects of the three hard winters in succession had so thinned out 

 both our residents and winter visitors that a period of some years 

 must elapse before we can expect to see them reappear in their 

 usual numbers. 



The stormy weather sent very few rare visitors to this locality ; 

 the only species worthy of notice being a fine adult Black- 

 tailed Godwit, shot by a young friend near Roserk Abbey on the 

 3rd of September ; and a very beautiful specimen of the Grey 

 Phalarope in that pretty transition stage of plumage between 

 the young and adult : this bird was shot by Mr. Little close 

 to his residence, on the tidal part of the Moy, on the 15th of 

 October. On Oct. 24th I observed a little flock of fi veil edwings 



