236 TEE ZOOLOGIST. 



more accuracy still required. It is therefore quite of interest to 

 compare such accounts as those given by Mr. Butterfield from one 

 locality or district with those gathered together for a wider area, or 

 with those from another locality or district. Thus, in the case of the 

 Stonechat, it is a bird which we in Scotland may well designate 

 " not uncommon but locally dispersed, varying greatly in numbers 

 east and west, north and south, and nowhere what could be called 

 very abundant save in a few favoured localities," in, say, a.d. 1900. 

 (But what it may be, say, ten, twenty, thirty or more years later, it 

 is not so easy to say !) Changes such as those described by Newton 

 in the numbers of the Bedshank and those spoken of by Mr. Butter- 

 field in Yorkshire are no doubt both equally correct. Indeed, we 

 know of quite a number of exactly similar facts as regards this bird 

 which have come under our own personal observation. For instance, 

 the almost complete disappearance of Bedshanks from quite an exten- 

 sive district which in my own remembrance and record was thickly 

 populated by nesting pairs prior to 1863, and the subsequent occupa- 

 tion of the same extensive area by the Greenshank, which first began 

 to take up nesting places there only a few years later — there were 

 none certainly there prior to 1865 or thereby — is one remarkable 

 illustration. And on my own property here the Bedshanks nest to 

 the extent, in some seasons, of at least four or five pairs, where none 

 had ever been present in my whole school-boy nesting days, though 

 the ground was perfectly suitable to all appearances, and though they 

 bred commonly a few miles off. As regards the dispersal of the 

 Greenshank, the tendency hitherto has been — within my own know- 

 ledge — to move from north to south and north-west to south-east, 

 and, after an interval, from west to east. These and other similar 

 dispersals are the points of interest so far as my own continuous 

 observations have enabled me to judge, assisted by the records of 

 other observers in the past. It may yet prove of greater interest 

 when (if ever) the endeavours may be crowned by a very much 

 longer series of facts accumulated from present times onward ; and 

 when all have been compared, tabulated, and analysed, some natu- 

 ralist of the future or some far-seeing historian of to-day may be 

 able to arrive at other abler conclusions, opening up and explaining 

 much of the past, and throwing a certain amount of prophetic light 

 upon the future. Some of the mysteries may be cleared up by long- 

 continued observations and careful records of many lifetimes of 

 generations of observers who are able to pay attention to all the 

 conditions involved, such as those of degrees of temperature and 



