PREFACE. XV11 



them breed in the islands of Strangford lake/' p. 233. In 

 another part of the volume it is observed : — " Pour of these islands 

 are called svian islands, from the number of swans that frequent 

 them," p. 154. That these fine birds built there at so compa- 

 ratively late a period may seem doubtful ; but it should be borne 

 in miud that Low, in his Fauna Orcadensis, written at the end 

 of the last century, informs us that " a few pairs build in the 

 holms of the loch of Stennes," in Orkney.* Butty, in Ins 

 Natural History of the County of Dublin published in 1772, 

 observes : — " There are two sorts [of " wild goose, Anser ferus"~\, 

 the one a bird of passage, that comes about Michaelmas and 

 goes off about March ; but there is a larger kind which stays 

 and breeds here, particularly in the Bog of Allen," vol. i. p. 333. 

 Harris, in his History of Down, speaks of the "great harrow 

 goose being found in a red bog in the Ardes near Kirkiston," 

 but says nothing of its breeding there. An octogenarian friend 

 has, however, informed me that a relative often told him that he 

 had robbed the nests of wild geese in this very locality, Kirkiston 

 flow ; — red bog of Harris ; — the period of his doing so was previous 

 to the year 1775. There' is little doubt that the true wild goose 

 (A. ferns) was the bird alluded to, as it formerly bred plentifully 

 in the fens of England, though for a considerable period they, 

 as well as the bogs of Ireland, have been deserted by it. 



The golden eagle is becoming annually more rare, and is now even 

 " very scarce " t in its former stronghold, the county of Kerry. 

 The kite, remarked by Smith in his History of Cork (1749) to 

 be so common as to " need no particular description," and to re- 

 main "all the year," has been known in the present century, only 



* No date is given: the author died in 1795. His work was not published 

 until 1813. 



t Mr. R. Chute. 



