1 62 The Ottawa Naturalist. [November 



OOLOGY. 



The Acadian Sharp -tailed Sparrow. 

 ( Amniodramus caudacutiis subvirgatus. ) 



The Museum of the Geological Survey has recently acquired 

 a set of four eggs of this sparrow or finch, with the female, from 

 Mr. R. W. Tufts, who collected them at Woltville, N. S., on the 

 second of June last. The label accompanying these specimens 

 states that the nest from which the eggs were taken was built 

 " in long thick grass near a salt marsh," that it was " very bulky, 

 raised three or four inches above the ground, and composed 

 entirely of dead grass." The eggs, which average 21 mm. by 

 15, are very pale bluish green, profusely sprinkled all over with 

 numerous, close set and very small draggled brownish markings, 

 rather than spots. 



The "Acadian" is a local variety of the Sharp-tailed Spar- 

 row, described by Mr. Jonathan D wight, junior, in the Auk for 

 July, 1887, but its nest and eggs seem to have been previously 

 unknown, or at least unrecorded. 



In the Survey's collection of eggs the genus Ammodramus 

 (literally sand run7ier,) as now understood, and inclusive of the 

 Grasshopper Sparrows {Coturniculus), is now represented by the 

 following sets. Two of the Ipswich Sparrow [A. princeps) from 

 Sable Island ; one of the Savanna Sparrow {^A sandivichensis 

 savanna) from Toronto Island ; four of the Western Savanna 

 Sparrow [A. sandiinchensis alatidinics) from Assiniboia and 

 Alberta ; two of Leconte's Sparrow {A. leconiei) from Assiniboia ; 

 and one of the Acadian Sharp-tailed Sparrow, from Nova Scotia. 

 But, in one of the sets of Leconte's Sparrow three of the four eggs 

 are Cowbird's. 



J. F. Whiteaves. 



A HYBRID OF SHEEP AND DEER. 



Having heard of a hybrid born to a sheep owned by a farmer 

 at New Limerick a town in Maine, U.S.A., I wrote for a descrip- 

 tion of it and received the following account : 



** It was dead when born and the nose was some decayed. 

 Except that it had a tail, there was nothing like a sheep about 



