308 Mr. W. Thompson's Contributions to the Fauna of Ireland, 



XLI V. — Additions to the Fauna of Ireland^ including descriptions 

 of some apparently new species of Invertebrata. By William 

 Thompson, Pres. Nat. Hist, and Phil. Society of Belfast. 



[With a Plate.] 



Species thus marked t hefore the names were indicated mostly by a ge- 

 neric name only, in my Report on the Invertebrate Fauna of Ireland, pub- 

 lished in the Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science for 1843 : those unmarked are subsequent additions. 



Birds. 

 Vulturfulvus, Linn., Gyps vulgaris, Savigny. 



Late in the autumn of 1843 Mr. Yarrell favoured me with the in- 

 formation that he had received a letter from Admiral Bowles, written 

 from the south of Ireland, in which this gentleman mentioned having 

 lately seen a living vulture at Castle Martyr, the seat of the Earl of 

 Shannon, and which was said to have been captured in the county 

 of Cork. The attention of Mr. R. Ball being called to the circum- 

 stance, he made inquiry of Lord Shannon, who replied, that the bird 

 was purchased by his steward for 2^. Qd. from a peasant, who stated 

 that he caught it on the sea- shore in that neighbourhood : its plu- 

 mage was in good order. His lordship politely offered the bird to 

 Mr. Ball for the collection in the Garden of the Zoological Society, 

 Dublin, but before arrangements were completed for its transmission 

 it died. The specimen was, by the directions of Lord Shannon, care- 

 fully preserved and stuffed and placed at the disposal of Mr. Ball, 

 who has added it to the collection in Trinity College, Dublin. It is 

 in adult plumage. 



Although we cannot tell whether this bird may not have escaped 

 from some vessel, still it need not excite surprise if the Vultur fulvus 

 should wander to this island, inhabiting as it does (according to 

 Temminck) the mountains of the north of Europe, the Alps .-^ and 

 Pyrenees. Another species of European vulture, the Cathartes per- 

 cnopterus, was once shot in Somersetshire*. 



Plat-billed Sandpiper, Tringa platyrhyncha, Temm. ; Gould, 

 Birds of Europe, "part 17^^; Yarrell, Brit. Birds, vol. ii. 

 p. 638. 

 Of this Tringa only one specimen is recorded as met with in 



* Pycnonotus chrysorrhceus, Swainson. — At the meeting of the British 

 Association held at Cork in 1843, 1 exhibited at the Natural History Section 

 an example of this African species sent for inspection from the collection of 

 native birds, or those killed in Ireland, belonging to Dr. Burkitt of Water- 

 ford. The following particulars respecting the bird, though mentioned at 

 the meeting, have not been published. Dr. Burkitt " purchased it from a 

 country-lad who brought it into Waterford in January 1 838 with a number 

 of blackbirds [^Ttirdus merula] and snipes, and who thought it was a hen 

 blackbird : he shot it at Mount Beresford, three and a half miles from Water- 

 ford." There can therefore be no doubt of the specimen having been killed 

 in this country. 



