Volume 9 - Electric Scotland

I
4 2
ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY
Common Shrew and a Water Shrew, which latter is
placed
in a different genus. The Field Mouse and the Harvest
Mouse are equally distinct, and I think Darwinians will
agree that all these species have been differentiated for the
past ten thousand years or more.
THE GREAT SHEARWATER IN SCOTTISH
WATERS.
By ALFRED NEWTON, M.A., F.R.S.
SO little is known of the appearance of the Great Shear-
on the seas and shores of
water, Puffinus gravis (O'Reilly),
Scotland and its isles, that I may perhaps be allowed to put
on record certain facts concerning it which may be new to
some readers of this journal, especially as one of them seems
to be of rather general interest. In these pages
it is unnecessary
to refer particularly to prior occurrences of the
species in Scottish waters. It is enough to remark that it
was not included in the late Mr. Robert " Gray's Birds of
the West of Scotland," published in 1871, and that all the
known instances, not amounting to half a dozen, have been
mentioned in one or other of the volumes of the well-known
series of " Vertebrate Faunas " which we owe to Messrs.
Harvie- Brown and Buckley. More than this, I
may say
that Mr. Henry Evans, whose opportunities of observing
birds at sea on the west coast of Scotland have been immeasurably
greater than those enjoyed by any other
naturalist, while his habit of bringing a telescope to bear
on almost every bird that comes within range ensures his
having made the best use of those opportunities, has informed
me that, until the occasion I am about to mention,
he never set eye on a Great Shearwater.
On the 2;th of June 1894 I had the good fortune to
be on board Mr. Evans's yacht while steaming northward up
the Great Minch making for North Rona. About noon we
came up with the Butt of Lewis, from which we were not
very far, and there was almost a dead calm. Soon after I
happened to see a pair of birds sitting on the water near the