378 BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
indebted to my cousin Mr. Robert Gladstone, jun., for the 
following translation : — 
" The Himantopus of Pliny .... This bird (of which 
two drawings, one large and the other smaU, made 
from the bird itself, are included among our illustrations) 
was sent to me by William Dalmahoy, an officer of the Royal 
Guards, and an excellent ornithologist. It had been shot 
with a gun at a lake near the town of Dumfries, where also a 
second specimen was subsequently shot, but, through some 
carelessness on the part of my military friend, was lost."* 
" I presume," adds Mr. Gladstone, " that both birds 
{i.e., the one which Dalmahoy sent to Sibbald and the one 
which was lost) were shot by Dalmahoy, — though the 
text does not actually say so much. I find in Douglas's 
Baronage of Scotland (Vol. I., p. 550) that William Dalmahoy of 
Ravebidge was ' an officer in the Scots Horse-Guards.' He 
was the second son of Sir Alexander Dalmahoy of that ilk." 
The illustration here given is a reproduction of the larger 
and better of the two illustrations (i.e. No. XI., Fig.l) referred 
to by Sir Robert Sibbald in his text, and I desire to thank 
Mr. G. B. Wright for the pains he has taken in photographing 
it. Professor Newton, commenting on this illustration, writes : 
" Sibbald was unfortunate in his draughtsman, who gave 
" the bird a hind toe "j ; but it will be seen that it 
has been so far correctly drawn as to show but three toes, 
one of which on each foot, however, is pointing backwards. 
The " lake near the town of Dumfries," where these first 
Black-winged Stilts were shot, cannot now be identified. 
The Darduff, Black and Sand Lochs were within two miles 
of the north of the town and would have answered the 
description, but they have long since been reclaimed and 
* Latin text. — " Himantopus Plinii. . . . Avis haec (cujus binse icones 
de ipsa ave desumptae in tabulis nostris habentur, una major, altera 
minor) mihi transmissa fuit a Gulielmo Dalmahoy uno ex prgefectis 
cohortis regise, historic avium peritissimo, apud lacumprope Drumfrisium 
oppidum sclopeto transfixa, ubi et altera quoque postea confossa fuit, 
quae militis incuria perdita," 
t Diet. Birds, 1893-1896, p. 914. 
