The Scottish Naturalist, 
19 
Before giving an account of the present state of each colony, 
I shall briefly recapitulate what we know of the numbers of the 
great skua existing at its three Shetland colonies in past days. 
Foula. — Though this is by far the largest colony at the present 
time, it would seem that this was not always the case ) their in- 
crease in this locality being entirely due to the care with which 
they were protected for a long time by the late Dr. Scott of Melby. 
About 1770 there appear to have been only a few pairs, for Low, 
m his "Tour through the Islands of Orkney and Shetland/' says, 
" Six pairs possess the highest ridge of Liorafield .... penalty 
for killing, i6s 8d., stg." — a large sum for the locality and date, 
and shows in what estimation the skua was held. At the begin- 
ning of the present century there seems to have been about a 
dozen pairs, and they have increased since then to their present 
numbers of about 60 pairs. In a paper on the " Summer Birds 
of Shetland" {Proc, Roy. Phys. Soc. Edin. 1888), I stated the 
number of skuas then on Foula at only 16 pairs. These figures 
I got from the proprietor himself, Mr. Scott of Melby, and I 
accepted them in preference to a report of there being as many as 
60 pairs which I heard as long ago as 1884. However, I have 
estimates this year ranging from 40 to 100 pairs; and giving the 
preference to those most reliable, we may take the total of the 
colony at about 60 pairs. This is a large number, but after a 
long period of immunity the skuas have fallen upon evil days and 
the numbers have been decreasing for the last year or two. 
Unst. — This is now a very much smaller colony than that on 
Foula, but some years previous to 1861, according to Saxby, it 
numberedbetween5oand6o pairs. By i87othesehadbeen reduced 
to 5 or 6, and the colony has remained at about that number ever 
since; the figures for the last seven years showing a slight increase as 
the following statistics show : — 1884, 5 pairs ; 1885, 6 pairs ; 1886, 
7 pairs; 1887, 8 pairs ; 1888, 8 pairs ; 1889, 8 or 9 pairs ; 1890, 
9 pairs. 
Northmavin. — This was originally, perhaps, the largest of the 
three stations, but being the most accessible, has suffered in pro- 
portion. The credit, or rather discredit, of the destruction of this 
colony is usually laid upon Dunn, the author of the ^' Ornithologists' 
Guide to the Islands of Orkney and Shetland ; " but this charge he 
