EXTERMINATION IN ANIMAL LIFE. 287 



hills ; " and whilst nest-hunting in Westmorland ghylls and 

 Yorkshire dales the following spring my brother and I found 

 skeletons every day."* Neltje Blanchan describes the Hermit 

 Thrushes (Turdus aonalaschkce), whose range is in the eastern 

 parts of North America, as being very rare since the severe cold 

 and storm in the Gulf States a few winters ago, when vast 

 numbers died from cold and starvation. t Eider Haggard has 

 detailed his experiences in one of the islands of the Hebrides 

 during the terrible winter of 1890-91. The keeper there told 

 him that he picked up many Snipe, dead or dying, by the side 

 of the frozen watercourses ; indeed, the Snipe on that island, 

 where they used to swarm, have only recently begun to recover 

 in numbers from the effects of that year of desolation. During 

 an exceedingly rigorous winter in Orkney, in 1894, as Mr. Camp- 

 bell thinks, hundreds of Cormorants perished from hunger. In 

 a roofless hut, a few yards from high-water mark, he counted 

 fourteen dying and dead. Eats were busily devouring the dead, 

 while the living stumbled weakly over the half-eaten bodies of 

 their comrades. In the most unlikely places they were to be 

 met with, coming right up to the doors, as if begging for shelter. 

 One of them surprised him by waddling into the workshop, 

 passing over his boots, as if unconscious of his presence, and 

 settling underneath the bench to die.t These instances of the 

 fatal consequences of sudden and severe cold on the lives of 

 birds are only few and partial; they are but indications of what 

 must frequently occur in the present living epoch of the earth, 

 and their records fulfil the purpose of drawing attention to 

 similar catastrophes that must necessarily have happened in 

 the past. We could add indefinitely to the list did space allow, 

 but must somewhat hastily refer to the exterminating effect of 

 glacial processes on other animals, especially on mammals. 



Scotland was visited with an exceedingly violent snowstorm 

 on the night between the 24th and 25th January, 1794. James 

 Hogg, the " Etterick Shepherd," has graphically described its 

 devastations. In that division of the South of Scotland that 

 lies between Crawford-muir and the Border seventeen shepherds 



- ;: ' With Nature and a Camera,' p. 163. 



-j- ' Bird Neighbours,' p. 126. 



I ' Notes on the Nat. Hist, of the Bell Bock,' p. 101. 



