623 
of Edinburgh, Session 1865 - 66 . 
in Lewis, which we could not have expected to find. I met with 
the garden- warbler, the willow wood- wren, and the pretty little 
gold-crest, in the plantation around Stornoway Castle. The age of 
the trees and bushes there is not great. These birds must thus 
have found their way thither after the plantation was made. It 
would be interesting enough if we could trace the path of their pro- 
gress north, especially as they arrive only a few days later than 
those which frequent the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. The pre- 
sence of the blue tit is as curious. Of related forms the pied 
wagtail and yellowhammer, whinchat and redbreast, may be men- 
tioned as not common. 
The lark may be named the bird of Lewis. On every moor, in 
every cultivated spot, inland or along the shore, wherever there is 
a bit of turf, you meet this bird. Some have thought that the in- 
crease of starlings in the Lowlands has thinned the number of larks. 
In Lewis both are very abundant. 
Among the Fringillidce, perhaps the least common is the house- 
sparrow. “ A pair of sparrows,” says James Wilson, in the work 
referred to above, “ built in Stornoway in 1833, but we did not see 
their descendants in 1811.” I believe that the date of the intro- 
duction of the sparrow into Lewis is correct. They are now spread 
all over the country ; but in few localities, except in Stornoway, do 
they breed in the eaves and thatch of houses. Even the sparrow 
turns away from the wretched huts in which the majority of the 
people dwell. Here, again^ we have an illustration of the influence 
of habit on instinct. Were a sparrow to build a nest in the thatch 
of one of these wretched hovels, it would be almost sure to be 
destroyed when the eggs were dropped. To prevent the escape of 
smoke almost all the huts are built without a chimney. Windows 
occur in very few of them, and the doors are smaller than those of 
cottages in the Lowlands. The object of this is to direct the peat 
smoke into the loose thatch, in which the soot may lodge. In 
spring this part of the covering is taken off, and spread over the 
“ lazy beds,” in which barley and green crops are to be raised. 
Thus manured, they yield abundant crops. The sparrow has been 
taught the uncertainty of tenure in such roofs, and builds its nest 
in the holes of rocks instead of the habitations of man. 
The CoJumhidce represented by the rock-pigeon and tlie wood- 
4 M 
VOL. V. 
