78 NorTeEs ON THE Birps oF DUMFRIESSHIRE. 
on a Sunday night to spear salmon by the light of a blazing 
torch; Moffat water, from its general shallowness, and the 
nakedness and level character of its banks, offering unwonted 
facilities for this sport. The parties had scarcely begun 1o 
search the pools, when they were astonished with some 
‘¢ ) 
strange noise that came ‘ splash, splash’ upon them; and 
soon a huge pair of wings appeared, magnified by the 
uncertain light, and accompanied with other startling and 
uncertain noises. The phenomena floated past, almost 
among their feet, and the young men terrified and impressed 
with the idea that an apparition had appeared to warn them 
of the danger of misspending the Sabbath day, left their 
sport and returned home. The circumstance was kept a 
profound secret, until the discovery of the cause of the 
phenomena relieved the youths from the fears which it had 
exciwegl, 2 
[The GOSHAWK (p. 204). When writing to me on 3rd 
February, 1921, regarding the ancient distribution of the 
Goshawk in Scotland, Mr J. E. Harting says :—‘‘ I have 
just been looking into your Birds of Dumfriesshire to see 
what is said about the Goshawk. It seems to me that Prof. 
Cosmo Innes is in error in his translation [of Roger Avenel’s 
charter to Melrose Abbey] when he writes that the family 
of Avenel ‘ reserved the eyries of Falcons and Tercels.’ In 
the Latin original the words accipitrum et sperveriorum show 
that the birds were Goshawks and Sparrow Hawks, both 
nesting in trees, and it may be inferred that the Peregrine 
was not intended, otherwise the genitive plural falconum. 
instead of accipitrum, would have been used to denote the 
species. Moreover, no trees were to be cut down in which 
such birds had formed eyries, therefore these were evidently 
not falcons. If the Latin had been accipitrum aut 
sperveriorum, it might be argued that the terms were 
synonymous, but as the conjunction is et obviously the refer- 
ence is to two different species, the first named being the 
132 J. S. Bushnan: Introduction to the Study of Nature, 1834, 
p. 237. 
133 Scotland in Middle Ages, 1860, pp. 129, 130. 
