Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/199

Rh left, for I saw only one flock of about thirty birds. It is not unlikely that, before leaving, their numbers may be recruited by birds coming from the south; these rest in the bay for some days or weeks before proceeding to their northern breeding haunts. On the same day I saw about twenty Sanderlings, all of which were still in the winter plumage.

—In his receutly-published fourth edition of 'The Moor and the Loch,' Mr. Colquhoun speaks of the Goats on Crap-na-gower, "busily engaged in cropping the lower branches of a venerable yew" (vol. i., p. 91), "munching their delicious repast of yew-twigs" (p. 98), and other similar expressions, and describes a fine old Goat who "hanged himself by the horns on a yew-tree, in attempting to feed upon the higher branches" (p. 90). Is it then the fact that Goats can and do eat yew-leaves with impunity, while horses, cows and other animals are poisoned if they feed on them? Gilbert White, touching on this subject in his 'Antiquities of Selborne' (Letter V.), says:—"While mention is making of the bad effects of yew-berries, it may be proper to remind the unwary that the twigs and leaves of yew, though eaten in a very small quantity, are certain death to horses and cows, and that in a few minutes. A horse tied to a yew-hedge, or to a faggot-stack of dead yew, shall be found dead before the owner can be aware that any danger is at hand, and the writer has been several times a sorrowful witness to losses of this kind among his friends; and in the island of Ely had once the mortification to see nine young steers or bullocks of his own all lying dead in a heap from browsing a little on a hedge of yew in an old garden into which they had broken in snowy weather. Even the clippings of a yew-hedge have destroyed a whole dairy of cows when thrown inadvertently into a yard." Since this observation was made, a century ago,—and it was no discovery of White's,—the truth of it has been frequently verified. Two instances have come under my own observation. In one case several cows and heifers were poisoned from feeding on the leaves of a growing yew-tree, and in the other a valuable cow belonging to my father died from from the effects of eating some clippings of yew which the gardener had incautiously thrown down in a meadow, into which the cows were driven the same evening after milking time. Fortunately only one of them discovered the heap of leaves and twigs, or