82 



THE ZOOLOGIST. 



tic us) were quite common ; they were much lighter than our Sparrows, 

 especially the hens. 



The next place I got an opportunity of looking out for birds was 

 Gossensass, in the Brenner Pass. They were few, as usual, and con- 

 sisted of Redstarts (Ruticilla phcenicurus), females only, and numbers 

 of Chaffinches ; also another finch which I could not make certain of. 

 There seemed to be no birds about the town of Innsbruck. We 

 walked out through great fields of maize to Schloss Ambros, and 

 there I only saw a Mistle-Thrush (Turdus viscivorus), and the usual 

 flocks of Chaffinches, which are as common as Sparrows at home. I 

 paid a visit to the Innsbruck Museum to see a collection of local 

 birds, most of them badly mounted and badly labelled, and rather de- 

 pressing to look at. From this we came straight home, so I had no 

 chance of seeing any more birds ; and I hope I have not taken up too 

 much of your valuable space with these notes. — W. H. Workman 

 (Lismore, Windsor, Belfast, Ireland). 



PISCES. 



Large Take of Herrings in the Moy Estuary, Killala Bay. — Her- 

 rings were late in visiting the estuary this season, very few appear- 

 ing until the beginning of November, when some large " schools " came 

 in from the bay, and which, in the estuary, kept chiefly at the upper 

 end, between Castleconnor and Roserk Abbey. At each side of that 

 part of the estuary there is a line of training walls to keep the water 

 in the main channel when the tide begins to fall, and which thus con- 

 fined in the narrow space between the walls increases the "scour," 

 deepening the channel. Between these and the shore there is a 

 wide expanse of sand left bare at low water, with a small shallow 

 channel running close along them, carrying off the water draining 

 from the sands by a narrow opening at the end of the walls to the 

 main channel. At high water, when the walls are covered, the Her- 

 rings spread over the estuary, wandering inside them ; but if they 

 do not return to the main channel before the water falls below the end 

 of the walls they are then imprisoned between these and the shore, 

 and the only escape they have is through the narrow outlet at the 

 end of the w T alls, and if the " school" is a large one they take a long 

 time to pass out when crowding to the opening. If observed in time 

 before escaping outside the walls the fishermen make fine hauls by 

 placing nets across the outlets, and thus keeping the Herrings inside 

 until by the fall of the tide they are left high and dry on the sands, 



