BLACKSTART. 47 
another, a male, in 1847; so also R. A. Julian, Esq., Junior, 
relates in “The Naturalist,’ volume i, page 44, that upwards 
of twenty were procured in the year 1850, sixteen of them 
by one person, in the neighbourhood of Plymouth and 
Devonport, in Devonshire, and Mount Edgecombe, in Corn- 
wall. One was obtained at Bembridge, in the Isle of Wight, 
by A. G. More, Esq., on the 9th. of December, 1852. 
In Ireland, one was shot near Wexford in February, 1836; 
one on a cliff near Youghall, in the county of Cork, in 
January, 1843; one at Castlefreke, near Rosscarberry, in the 
west of the county of Cork, in the first week in November, 
1845; another, a female, was taken on board a steam-vessel 
on the 5th. of November, 1841, when midway between Belfast 
and Glasgow. One was taken in Scotland by Provost Sinelair 
in 1851, in his garden at Cullen, recorded by Mr. Edward, 
of Banff, m “The Naturalist,’ vol. 1, page 145. 
This bird addicts itself to mountains, hilly, rocky, and 
stony places, but it also in the breeding-season frequents 
villages and towns, where it shews its natural predilection 
for elevated situations, by resorting to the highest buildings, 
towers, steeples, churches, and castles, in the same way that 
we see sheep, and even the youngest lambs, exhibiting a 
similar instinct by choosing the summit of the most humble 
ridge on which to recline, as would their kindred, the wild 
goats, for whom ‘the high hills are a refuge,’ delight to peer 
at you from the giddy peak of some overhanging crag or 
dangerous precipice, to them a secure resting-place, whereon 
they find a safe footing, and from whence they look down 
with scorn on the plain below. ‘These are the situations in 
which the Blackstart too delights, and here, even above the 
last region of vegetation, it passes the summer time among 
the hoary rocks, the broken fragments of the mountain’s former 
peak, which have in ages past been reft from their place by 
some fearful force from within or without, or have yielded 
to the universal law of decay, to which even the ‘sturdy rock, 
for all his strength,’ must in time inevitably submit. 
They are gay, lively, and active birds, and of a shy nature, 
but nevertheless appear to be easily caught in traps. 
These. birds usually arrive in this country the first week 
in November, and in one instance have been observed so soon 
as the 28th. of October; they depart again at the end of 
March, or beginning of April. In mild seasons they have 
been ener to remain throughout the year in Switzerland, 
