282 THE ZOOLOGIST 
abundant reasons for regretting that I did not keep actual 
written records of all these places. Indeed, I cannot give the 
range of the peculiarity even in the county itself; I have seen the 
perching in the Lake District, and I think also in the extreme 
west of Lancashire. I can be quite definite in giving the Isle 
of Man, North Wales, and most parts of South-eastern-England 
as localities where the Starling does, either frequently or rarely, 
perch on living cattle or sheep. The birds are said to search the 
fleece for ‘‘ ticks” (Melophagus ovinus), but, although watching 
them very closely, I have never been sure that this is the fact. 
This curious difference in habit may appear a most trivial 
thing, but as a psychological problem it remains insoluble to 
me, and appears to have a bearing on the wider problem of dis- 
tribution. It is difficult to imagine that we have on these 
Pennine slopes a colony of Starlings unaffected by migrants 
from other localities, and equally difficult to think that the 
Lancashire birds sink their habits in visiting another county, 
or that the immigrants alter theirs when they reach Lancashire. 
Others besides the present writer would be glad to see notes 
from readers of ‘The Zoologist’ resident elsewhere in our 
islands. I can add that in answer to one query addressed to a 
contributor as to the habits of the bird in this locality I received 
the reply: ‘‘Your question is easily answered. I have never 
seen a Starling perch on either a cow or a sheep in my life ’’—a 
scrap of information that must read strangely to an observer 
living in, let us say, the county of Surrey. 
As a British bird, the Starling has fluctuated numerically 
and otherwise in a remarkable manner. No one has yet been 
to the trouble of studying these changes so far as England is 
concerned, but Scotland has been more fortunate, for there 
Mr. J. A. Harvie-Brown (Annals Scot. Nat. Hist. 1895, pp. 1-22, 
and map; and a note by Mr. R. Service, pp. 92-96) has care- 
fully described the past and the present status of the bird. 
‘‘ From time immemorial ’’ it has been common in the Orkneys, 
the Shetlands, and the Outer Hebrides, and apparently unknown 
on the mainland throughout the whole of Scotland.* About a 
** Writing now from memory, I fancy it was Sir William Jardine who 
recorded how he saw his first wild Starling at York, during a coach journey 
te London; and several non-ornithologists from across the Border, at the 
latter end of the eighteenth century, have written to the same effect. 
