34 NorTeES ON THE BrrDSs OF DUMFRIESSHIRE. 
learned, is not the case though Murray may have been en- 
gaged in transporting troops to the Black Sea during the 
war; he had often been in Constantinople and knew the 
Eastern Mediterranean well. He died 16th July, 1905, aged 
eighty-two, and was buried in Ruthwell Churchyard. 
During the Great War the use of “‘ flight-nets ’’ seems 
to have become more general, and this is doubtless due to 
the increase in the value of the catch being sufficient, during 
recent years, to repay the labour of setting the nets. The 
nets used locally are not more than fifty yards long, some ten 
feet in depth and set, about four feet from the ground, on 
poles. Those which I have seen in Caerlaverock parish have 
(m3 b) 
been placed on the ‘‘ merse-land,’’ where the wild-fowl resort 
at night and, though of course Geese are the booty most 
desired, all sorts of birds are liable to be caught. It is for 
this very reason that the use of these engines of promiscuous 
destruction is deprecated: valueless birds are often 
entangled and when it is on record that a hundred Gulls have 
been taken at a single “‘ haul,’’ it will be readily understood 
how fatal, on occasion, these nets are to Birds. The 
unfortunates which become enmeshed in their toils die linger- 
ing deaths and it cannot be claimed that there is the slightest 
’’ in the use of these.“ fliyht-nets ’’ which, 
in my opinion, should be prohibited by law. 
element of “* sport 
PROTECTION. 
The section devoted to this subject (pp. Ixxxvii.-xci.) is 
rendered out of date by the Wild Birds Protection (County of 
Dumfries) Order, 1922, which is here appended :— 
COUNTY OF DUMFRIES. 
THE WIED BIRDS PROTECTION ORWE Rica: 
In pursuance ct the powers conferred upon me by the 
Wild Birds Protection Acts, 1880 to 1908, and upon applica- 
tion by the Joint Committee of the County and Burghs of 
Dumfries (to whom the administration of the said Acts has 
been delegated by the Ccunty Council of Dumfries in terms of 
Section 76 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1889), I, 
