PROCEEDINGS OE THE PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OE NATURAL SCIENCE. 
97 
up a catalogue, on the same principle, of all such birds as 
breed within the district, with a view of forming a com¬ 
plete collection of their nests and eggs. A small number 
of these have already been contributed, and though not 
yet systematically arranged, will shortly be so, each bear¬ 
ing a descriptive label telling the mode of nidilication, such 
as the usual place of building, structure of nest, number of 
eggs and broods; and also, locality, date, and donor, with 
numbers corresponding to those in the catalogue. But to 
enable this to be thoroughly carried out, assistance in collect¬ 
ing the nests and eggs of the several species will be required 
from all those willing to lend a hand, to whom the de¬ 
siderata will be made known. In the numbering of the 
specimens, it may be as well here to mention that the 
classification adopted is that which, resting chiefly on the 
character of the bones, is now pretty generally accepted by 
naturalists, and which system has been followed by Mr 
Dresser, in his late important work on “The Birds of 
Europe,” in which he commences with the thrushes and 
concludes with the grebes, instead of beginning with the 
vultures and ending with the petrels, as in former works on 
ornithology. It cannot, however, be said that a universal 
system of classification has yet been secured, though perhaps 
a move in the right direction has been made, there being 
still some points of difference, in which ornithologists are 
not entirely agreed. Thus Mr Seebohm, in his new work 
on “ The British Birds and their Eggs,” in which he puts 
the birds of prey first, says that he does so as they were so 
placed by Cuvier in his classification,—“ a system which,” 
he remarks, “ although it is now universally admitted to 
be mainly an artificial one, is so well known to all ornith¬ 
ologists that it may well serve as an index, until the natural 
order of sequence is discovered.” I may here mention that 
it is in contemplation to have, in addition to the birds 
mounted in the larger cases in the museum, a full collec¬ 
tion of skins, to be kept in drawers in the table cabinets, 
for the purpose of comparison, and more readily illustrating 
and studying the several genera. Of the 125 species which 
I have mentioned as being already in the collection, it may 
not be uninteresting to draw your attention for a few 
moments to some of the rarer and more valuable of 
these. First and foremost, then, I will take the King- 
Duck—a fine male specimen of which I was fortunate 
enough to procure through the services of Mr Henderson, 
of Dundee, it having been got last December on the Tay, 
below Dundee. The King-Duck, or King-Eider, as it is 
sometimes called, though generally considered a very rare 
bird in Great Britain—there being few British speci¬ 
mens in any collection—seems, of late years, not unfre- 
quently to have been observed, during the winter months, ' 
off the mouth of the Tay and in the Bay of St Andrews. 
Mr Harvie Brown states that Mr J. Anderson, in a letter 
to him, mentions the King-Duck as plentiful in the beginning 
of January, 1879, about Dundee; and Mr Neilson told me 
he had killed a female of this species some few years ago, 
which, I believe, is the specimen now in the collection of 
the Dundee Naturalists’ Society. This duck is not uncom¬ 
mon on thecoastof Newfoundland, and aboundsin the Arctic 
Seas, where it is frequently seen far out'from land. Its 
powers of diving are said to exceed those of most other birds, 
as it can remain as long as nine minutes under water at a 
time, and reach a depth, in search of its food, of 100 fathoms. 
Another very rare bird is the Bittern. This bird was got 
some years ago in the neighbourhood of Blairgowrie, and 
is believed to have been shot in 1864. It was presented 
to the Society by Mr M. Gentle, and was—together with 
another, killed on the banks of the Tay, immediately below 
Mugdrum House, about the same time, and now preserved 
at Carpow—in all probability part of a large flight men¬ 
tioned by Mr Gould as reaching our shores in the winter of 
1863-4, when, as he states, examples were killed in every 
part ef the country—from the northernmost part of Scot¬ 
land to the extreme west of Cornwall. The Bittern, in 
former times, was by no means uncommon in Britain, pre¬ 
vious to the draining of all the marshes and fens, and, 
probably, in those days, was often to be found in our 
immediate neighbourhood, in the Carse of Gcwrie, when, 
no farther back than the middle of last century, it was, for 
the greater part, covered with reeds and swamps. Buffon’s 
Skua, another rare bird, was shot on the Tay, off Newport, 
during the severe weather in December last. This bird, 
like the King-Duck, is also almost exclusively an Arctic 
species, not known, like some of the other Skuas, to breed 
in these islands, and appearing only in winter. Its 
food, except during the breeding time, when it feeds 
freely on the crowberry (Empetrum nigrum), is pro¬ 
cured, like others of its tribe, by plunder and robbery from 
Gulls and Terns. These it persecutes and buffets, until, in 
order to lighten themselves and fly the faster, they, to afford 
a means of escape, disgorge the produce of some suc¬ 
cessful fishing, which is adroitly seized before it reaches 
the water. This end being attained, tbe robber ceases 
his persecution, until the cravings of hunger prompt 
him to single out another victim. The autumn of 1879 
will be long remembered by ornithologists for the remark¬ 
able arrival of Skuas, of several species, on all our eastern 
shores, when, during the months of October and November, 
they appeared in unaccountable numbers—more especially 
the Pomatorhine. Of these many were killed on the Tay. 
I have no record, however, of Buffon’s Skua being in this 
