34 
NATURE NOTES. 
years since anybody was at liberty to roam in any direction 
among the Scottish mountains, and even to shoot as many 
birds as he pleased, or rather was able to shoot — grouse were 
not so plentiful then. It is only since the market value of these 
“ shootings ” has been found out that restrictions have been 
placed on access to mountains. In this matter it is only fair to 
say that the holders and recent purchasers of shootings are to 
blame for by far the greater part of the “grabbing” of public 
rights, and that the older proprietors incur little reprobation. 
In these circumstances is it to be wmndered at that the public 
are apathetic in the matter of a mere road when what they 
want is a -whole range of mountains, or rather free access to 
them ? Nothing could be more popular than the reception 
given to Mr. Bryce’s “ Access to Mountains Bill ” of a few 
years ago. What has become of it ? If there is any young 
politician desirous of the popular canonization so properly 
bestowed on Sir John Lubbock for a measure of benefit to the 
people which all feel and recognise, let him take up the “Access 
to Mountains Bill.” 
George Murray. 
THE MIGRATION OF THE WOODCOCK.* 
E subject of the migration of birds is the most inter- 
esting and most amazing in the history of the most 
fascinating of all animals. What causes a creature 
ordinarily so domestic, so fond of separate quiet 
places, so frail as to be in many cases hardly more powerful 
than a large moth, to dare sea and storm for thousands of miles, 
and mostly to choose the night for his romantic pilgrimage, the 
time when his usual wont is to sleep as sound as an alderman 
of the City of London ? What causes the Woodcock, always a 
solitary don in his habits, to fly singly each one across the 
German Ocean to our western bowery hollows and forest tan- 
gles, and yet to arrive in such long lines as to cover, of course 
sparsely, 350 miles of English coast in one night (from the Isle 
of May, Firth of Forth, to Orfordness, Suffolk, opposite Ipswich, 
in one night, October 12, 1882) ? What rules the flight of these 
over-sea arrivals of myriads of birds which, if they were aerial 
ships made by man, would collide, and strew the sea with the 
dead ? There is an awe in the subject, however much modern 
science has enlarged or illuminated it, and to reverent thought 
* From a lecture delivered at Hampstead on behalf of the Selborne Society, 
on Nov. 2 1st, 1889. 
