310 



BIRDS. 



necked Phalarope was a decadent species as breeding on the mainland of 

 Scotland ! I will not say what I believe as to the dispersal taking 

 place from the mainland to the north isles of Shetland, and at the 

 same, or nearly the same time, to the Outer Hebrides, but only make 

 one remark, and that is : I believe that the strength of the dispersal 

 " wave," which had at one time populated the mainland suitable 

 localities, ceased to be a factor some fifty or eighty years ago. Just 

 as in the same way I have endeavoured to express my belief under 

 species of very similar supposed laws" Q) in the processes of 

 dispersal. 



To return to the immediate values in this area — and its volume, — 

 the Red-necked Phalarope can certainly claim the values I have 

 apportioned to it at the head of this article; and the following 

 records may be cited : — 



1813. — Don mentions it in his list, but with no remarks. 



1874. — Montrose Basin, 23rd December 1874, and October 1877. 



1875. — Mr. Whittaker saw one bird in full plumage in the in- 

 terior, in a locality in the north-west ; and I have already referred 

 to this instance of a summer occurrence. The date was the 20th 

 June 1875. 



Without desiring to enter upon mere " theoretical deductions " — 

 if there be such an anomaly ! — I wish only to draw attention to a 

 singular grouping of these recorded dates, i.e. between, say, 1874 and 

 1877, raising the possibility, if not the probability, that birds were 

 bred at the old haunt or near to it ; and other two recorded from 

 the Montrose Basin as above given. 



Should this reading be indeed correct, then there is another 

 significance in the above grouping of dates. It may be that it 

 affords yet another indication of how difficult it is, in these days, to 

 preserve our rarer birds. The Bird-Preservation Acts, and the Bird- 

 Preservation Societies and County Councils endeavouring to carry 

 out these Acts, and the endeavours of others, may have done, as I 

 believe they have, some good ; but so long as a fen shillings gun-licence 

 continues to be granted to all and sundry to carry and use a gun, for 

 shooting all that is not game, we seem to be only robbing Peter to pay 

 Pauin 



^ An increase in numbers in several species — as may be gathered from my accounts 

 under some of these — appears to have taken place about 1874, and since then, — i.e. as 

 compared with the decrease which Col. Drummond Hay frequently takes note of prior 

 to that time in certain of them, and up to 1880 in others. He accounted for it then, in 

 some measure, by the imposition of the gun-tax, which "has put a salutary check 



