( 157 ) 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MAMMALIA. 



Notes on the Mammals of Islay. — Mr. Harold Russell is quite 

 right in that the late Mr. T. E. Buckley and I were " incorrect " in 

 stating that " the Lesser Shrew is the species which alone inhabits 

 the Isles." We now realize, what Mr. Russell tells us, that Sorex 

 araneus has been identified by Mr. Oldfield Thomas as occurring in 

 Islay. We ought to have said "up to the date of our writing 

 (*. e. May, 1892), Sorex minutus, which alone had been found in- 

 habiting the Isles," &c. This, I think, would have more correctly 

 described what was then known of the distribution of this land 

 mammal. We find that the late Mr. Edward R. Alston, when he 

 wrote his " Mammalia " for the ' Fauna of Scotland,' prepared for the 

 Glasgow Nat. Hist. Soc. — and which we very fully quote in our 

 volume on the ' Outer Hebrides ' (pp. 1-7) — he at that time queried 

 the occurrence of either S. tetragonurus or S. minutus in the Isles of 

 the Inner Group of the Hebrides, but recorded the presence of S. 

 minutus both on the Mainland and in the Outer Hebrides — and, 

 indeed, founded two arguments on the Natural Dispersal of Land 

 Mammals in Great Britain — and, as regards Ireland and Scotland 

 especially, upon that and similar phenomena. As the Common 

 Shrew has only now been identified and recorded from Islay, there 

 still seems to be some difficulty in accounting for its natural occur- 

 rence there, if we accept Alston's views of Dispersal. 



As I am writing just now, I may mention also that a white Otter 

 {ante, p. 114) was preserved by the late Mr. Henry Evans, of Jura, 

 where I saw it in the hall of his Shooting Lodge at Small Isles, Jura. 

 It had been captured in Jura. — J. A. Hakvie-Beown (Dunipace, 

 Larbert, Stirlingshire, N.B.). 



P.S. — I would like to add that I hope all that was written so 

 long ago as 1888 and 1892 will not be considered as applicable to the 

 state of a changing fauna and the changed conditions of the present 

 time, knowing as we do how rapid are many changes in dispersal and 

 extension of species from numerous causes which may not have 

 existed a short twenty-five years ago. 



Variety of the Mole. — On March 25th last I trapped in this 

 garden a male Mole weighing a little over 3f oz., and in very good 

 condition. It had a patch on the throat, a small patch on the fore- 

 head, and a large one on the lower belly of the orange-chestnut 

 sometimes seen much more largely developed on the under parts. 



