BIRDS. 



269 



attention to the other careful summary by Mr. W. Evans of the 

 results of the same phenomenon."^ 



I confine my attention, as before, to our present areal boundaries 

 for the most part ; but I cannot refrain from quoting one remark of 

 Mr. Macpherson's Introduction as representing a very salient point 

 indeed as regards "movements of birds"': "Wherever a Sand- 

 Grouse occurred in 1863, there, a score or half a hundred appeared 

 twenty-five years later." That is to say, the birds followed, with 

 slight deviation, the same routes which their predecessors took twenty- 

 five years before. But the earlier immigration seemed to spend its 

 force in the east counties of Scotland to the south of the Great 

 Divide of the Grampians. These are trenchant sentences. The 

 second and greater invasion "affected the Moray Firth, Caithness, 

 Orkney, Shetland, and the Hebrides, far more than the east coast 

 of Scotland which lies to the south of the same Great Di^^de," — 

 another trenchant sentence, if read in the light of other information 

 as regards migration ! 



Now, coming to the more immediate duty before me in this 

 volume. The authorities for Tay and Strathmore, quoted by Mr. 

 Macpherson, were as follows : Col. Drummond Hay ; and Messrs. 

 Speedie, lessees of a portion of Tents Muir ; Henderson of Dundee, 

 and others. 



Going back to 1863, one was reported from Perthshire — an adult 

 male. 



Seven or eight were obtained on the Forfar coast (see ante) in 

 1863. (I must here premise that returns in 1888 were not so full 

 or so satisfying as in 1863.) I now take up those of 1888 : — 



A female was shot out of some twenty-five or thirty on May 21, and 



sent in to Mr. Henderson, Dundee. 

 On 28th May 1888, a male was shot out of three at Loch Eannoch. 

 Other three were obtained near Castle Menzies, Abercairney, and 



Strathearn before the end of May. On the 12th June 1888, 



a female out of a flock of forty near Crieff. 

 One was picked up dead, but quite warm and freshly killed, on the 



railway near Arbroath, and the birds appeared upon Tents Muir 



first in small flights, and later in the year in pairs — as we are 



informed by Mr. Henderson and others. 



^ "Notes on Pallas's Sand-Grouse, etc., in Scotland, during the recent great West- 

 ward Movement of the Species" {Proc. Royal Phys. Soc. Edin., 1889, vol. x., part 1, 

 pp. 106-26). 



