24 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
somewhat mysterious royalty of the ninth century, Alfred the 
Great (A.p. 849-901). 
King Alfred.—Alfred’s gifts in respect of “ falconarios, 
accipitrarios, canicularios quoque,” are alluded to in the 
ancient chronicle of Florentius Wigorniensis. Alfred is even 
supposed to have himself penned, or to have had written, a 
treatise on the subject of Hawking, so great was his delight 
in this occupation, a treatise which, did it now exist, would 
take precedence of all that has been written in this country. 
Birds eaten in Scotland by the Picts.—If the few Saxon 
documents which survive afford us very little information 
about Natural History, there is another way in which we 
may glean something, and this is by the use of the spade. 
Already in several cases the bones of birds, mostly large 
ones, which have been used as food by early dwellers in the 
land, showing little signs of decay, have been exhumed. 
Especially has this been the case in Scotland, in the 
vicinity of ancient earth-forts and dwellings, where the half- 
eaten remains of animals were likely to be thrown away by 
the Picts or Caledonians. These were the inhabitants of 
North Britain a thousand years ago, and they have left their 
marks behind them. 
In the course of some excavations in an ancient earthwork 
of this sort, in the Orkney Islands, assigned to the Picts, recog- 
nisable remains of the Solan Goose, Cormorant, Shag, Great 
Northern Diver, Whooper Swan, Gull, Manx Shearwater and 
Great Auk were dug up.* But these are not the only remains of 
the Solan Goose which have been disinterred, for in Caithness 
similar bones were discovered, as well as in the North of Ireland, t 
and in Ayrshire,$ and in the kitechen-middens of Denmark. 
Mr. James Ritchie has been good enough to inform me that 
a large collection from Dunagoil Cave in Bute, a likely locality 
for Solan Goose bones, being only thirty-five miles from Ailsa 
Craig, contained none, nor were there any with the abundant 
remains of the Shag in three caves examined in East Fife, in 
which were also found remains of the Goose, Gull and Diver. 
N. F. Ticehurst, ‘‘ British Birds,’ 1907-8, Vol. I, p. 309. 
In 1864. See ‘‘ Prehistoric Remains of Caithness.” 
“Trish Naturalist,” 1599, p. 5. 
“ Zoologist,” 1915, p. 406, 
ith # 
