312 Former Status of the Common Starling in Britain. 



of doubt in the matter, not that I would insinuate that the 

 man was untruthful, but that he might have been mistaken — 

 and it is somewhat singular that this observation is not con- 

 firmed by many other old men in this or other adjoining towns. 

 In ' The Birds of Yorkshire/ page 217, it is stated that a Mr. 

 Ford, of Caistor, writing in The Field, 20th October, 1888, 

 remarks that a friend of his told him he recollected the first 

 pair of Starlings that came to Swaledale, at Low Row, a 

 few years after they made their way to Summerside, then to 

 Muker, Keld and the head of the dale. If the Starling was so 

 local in its distribution in Yorkshire, it is somewhat curious 

 that Thomas Alhs, writing of this species in 1844, should make 

 the statement that it was ' universally common ' — and the 

 Rev. L. Jenyns, in his work published in 1835, mentions the 

 Starling as a ' plentiful and widely-dispersed species.' Robert 

 Mudie, in his ' Feathered Tribes of the British Islands ' (1834), 

 states that the Starling is found ' abundantly in all the lower 

 parts of Britain and in the most northerly of the Island.' In 

 Charles Waterton's Essays (1845), sixth edition, he gives 

 twenty-four pairs of Starlings as having built in his old ivy- 

 covered tower. Many other records could be given if necessary, 

 to prove that the Starling was a widely-breeding species in 

 England during the years 1835-50. A letter written to the late 

 J. A. Harvie Brown by the late Duke of Argyle, dated 19th 

 January, 1894, states : ' I never saw a Starling till I went to 

 England in 1836. I still recollect the great interest with which 

 I saw the bird for the hrst time at the Posting Inn, at North- 

 allerton, in Yorkshire.' We must not, however, infer from this 

 letter that the Starling was then an unknown or even a rare 

 bird in Scotland. Indeed, I am not quite sure whether the 

 same mistake has not been made regarding the status of the 

 Starling in former years in Scotland as in England. It is said 

 that the bird first appeared in East Ross in 1865, and another 

 observer has stated that between the years 1845 and 1848, a 

 most curious bird which was taken to be a Starling visited his 

 stack-yard at Inverurie, this being the first appearance of this 

 bird in that district. Many Highlanders even now assert that 

 the Starling has only within comparatively recent years made 

 its appearance in the Highlands, but St. John, in his ' Tour in 

 Sutherland,' in 1849, writes : — ' The Common Starling is 

 widely distributed. The greatest number that I saw in any 

 one place was on the Island of Kanda ' ; and writing in The 

 Zoologist, in 1848, on the birds of the Northern Districts of 

 Inverness-shire, A. Hepburn says, ' The Starling was widely 

 distributed over the cultivated grounds.' In The Naturalist 

 for July, 1853 (p. 220), Mr. John Longmuir writes, ' From the 

 statement with regard to the occurrence of the bird (Starhng) 

 in our county, one would be led to suppose that it is a rare 



Naturalist, 



