326 Grebe, Dabchick, Purre. 



(which I did not leave until my twentieth year), the inestim- 

 able fathers of that noble establishment, having studied my 

 disposition, and perceived the bent of it, kindly allowed me to 

 follow it up. So that rhetoric and rambling, classics and 

 climbing, poetry and polecat- hunting, formed part of my oc- 

 cupation ; and, ere I took my leave of the venerable towers of 

 Stonyhurst, I had laid a zoological foundation sufficiently 

 solid to enable me to build upon it some future day. I am 

 now at work. — Charles Waterton. Walton Hall, May 4. 1836. 



Feathers in the Gizzard of the larger Species of Grebe, and 

 "why? (p. 202.) — This subject has long engaged my attention. 

 The same circumstance is noticed by Montagu, as having 

 been observed in the crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus hath.). 

 Audubon likewise mentions it, in vol. iii. of his delightful 

 Ornithological Biography : but the notion of these feathery 

 substances being feathers appears never to have entered his 

 head. And, for my part, I fully agree with that excellent 

 ornithologist, in considering them, merely the feathery seeds 

 of certain plants devoured by the bird. The supposition that 

 they are actually feathers seems not likely. Could your cor- 

 respondent supply me with a specimen of this feathery sub- 

 stance, from the gizzard of the grebe ? It appears to be most 

 commonly found in the crested species. (See the Analyst, 

 vol. iv., p. 172.) — Neville Wood. Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, 

 April 6. 1836. 



The Dabchick [(VI. 194. 520.) Podiceps minor Lath.], 

 Remarks on, incidental in a note on the notice (in II. 404.) of 

 the remarkably swift diving of a certain species of bird. — 

 The velocity with which the dabchick, for instance, will dive, 

 and avoid the shot from one's gun, almost exceeds belief. I 

 have often fired at them about Oxford, where they are so 

 common ; but, though in those days I seldom missed a shot, 

 I never killed one of these little birds, as they invariably 

 (even when flying over the surface of the water) dived on 

 seeing the flash. The detonating guns, now so common, will, 

 of course, enable the shooter to obtain them. — Lansdown 

 Guilding. St. Vincent, May 1. 1830. 



The Purre' s (Tringa Cinclus) Breeding at Martin Mere, 

 Lancashire. (VII. 599.) — I should feel obliged to Mr. H. 

 Berry, if he would state whether the birds which he disturbed 

 from the nests were in that stage of plumage by which the 

 purre is distinguished from the dunlin (T. alpina Lin., T. 

 variabilis Meyer) ; as it is generally admitted by all recent 

 authors, that they are the same species, differing only in the 

 plumage at different periods of the year ; the purre being the 

 species in its winter garb ; the dunlin in its summer, or breed- 



