DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLE OF MAN XXXV 
Man. Many a question occurs to the bird-lover, to which 
analogy and conjecture alone must supply the answer. Did 
Cormorant and Heron, Bittern and Black-headed Gull, nest 
amid the tangled thickets and on the reedy islets that rose 
from the northern meres? Did our ancestors hang over the 
beetling edges of Stacka to gather the great eggs of the 
Guillemot, or quest the brows of Pistol and Rheaby for the 
young of the noble Falcon, to be trained for the pastime of 
their king and his ‘optimates’? What were the haunts 
and habits of the Chough at a time when it was familiar to 
every inhabitant? Had the Eagle, whose remembrance 
seems just dying out in the south-west, other eyries than 
Earnery, and the Shearwater other nesting places than the 
Calf? What lore, Celtic or Norse, attached itself to the 
Raven and the Owl? What was the status of the Jack- 
daw and the Starling, of the Wood Pigeon and the Rook, 
under primitive conditions of culture, and when trees for 
the nidification of the latter two species were wanting ? 
Of all species, however, which have been recorded as 
breeding in the Isle of Man, we know of no more than five 
which have ceased to do so: the Bittern, the White-tailed 
Eagle, the ‘ Manx’ Shearwater, the Black Grouse, and the 
Heron (if the last named really does not nest now). Other 
interesting species, like the Chough, have decreased in 
numbers. Yet the changes in the human life of Man, great 
as they have been, especially during the last fifty years, 
have comparatively little affected the face of the land out- 
side the limits of the growing towns; and the preservation 
of game, which has so altered the fauna of many British 
counties, has not been extensively or seriously engaged in 
here." The growth of wood, which a hundred years ago 
1 The Chief Constable's official record, taken from the books kept by those 
licensed to deal in game (see at end of this volume, clause 19 of the Game Act, 
1882), shows that in 1903, 2694 game birds were purchased by the dealers, of 
