NOTES AND QUERIES. 113 
could find of information upon our rarer, and especially our dis- 
appearing, species; and again of those, most particularly, the Osprey, 
Kite, and White-tactled Hagle. Alas! to these, too, I have been 
obliged to add for special attention some others in later years. I 
have had lists drawn up of Ospreys, &c., killed in Britain, and I fully 
agree with what Rev. Mr. Jourdain says about that killing being the 
principal cause of their almost total extinction. Dealers may possess 
as many or more eggs of Hagles and Ospreys, but no person need tell 
me that those represent the eggs of British or Scottish Ospreys (or 
White-tailed Eagles). Ido know that one person has been stated 
on good authority to possess an abnormal number of Ospreys’ eggs, 
said to have been taken in Scotland. But I agree with Mr. Jourdain 
that taking eggs alone would not have reduced our Ospreys to the 
verge of extinction; but it is the killing of the young migrants im 
autumn and also the birds returning in spring, which I believe—along 
with Mr. Jourdain, and, I may add, with the late Prof. A. Newton, 
who always maintained the same—has correctly caused the decrease. 
That we have immigrants from Scandinavia and North of Europe is, 
I hold, an ascertained fact beyond dispute, and that these compose 
the bulk of those shot or otherwise destroyed principally in England 
—and in England principally in the eastern counties. Like Mr. 
Jourdain, my statement of this is based upon what I consider the 
very easy study of the ‘ fly-lines” of the species. Last autumn, not 
far from this house where I am writing these notes, a single Osprey 
frequented a sheet of water, which lies in the centre of a large 
manufacturing area. Hearing of its arrival and stay of several days, 
Tam glad to say I was active in its preservation, and by my repre- 
sentations I had that done. It remained quite eight days, and then 
left. I had also written to the R.S.P.B., telling the Secretary of the 
fact, and praying the Society to give notice to all the county 
authorities along the “ fly-lines” through the counties to the south. 
Whether this was done or not, I never was informed by the Central 
London Authority! I can only hope that that bird after our care 
here had equal care given to it elsewhere in other counties. It is 
now some forty years since an Osprey was shot at this same place I 
speak of, which was brought to me in the flesh. That, too, was 
recorded in the ‘ Zoologist.’ One further remark and I have done. 
Ospreys slain in, let me say, the Outer or Inner Hebrides and West 
of Scotland or amongst the lakes of ‘ Lakeland,” and the few which 
appear in the West Counties, and the stell fewer which visit Ireland, 
are of all others those which are the most likely to become Scottish 
Zool. 4th ser. voi. XVI., March, 1912. K 
