MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES. 113 



Haddenham, (two males and two females,) and a very fine Merlin, (Falco 

 oesalon.) — William Farren, Jun. 



Rare Birds about Plymouth. — In October last a fine specimen of tbe 

 Solitary or Great Snipe, {Scolopax major,) was caught a few miles from Ply- 

 mouth. In November a few examples of the Black Redstart were killed. 

 In December the Little Auk, Fork-tailed Petrel, and three Bitterns were 

 obtained. — John Gatcombe, Wyndham Place, Plymouth, March 7th., 1857. 



The Jack Snipe. — These birds, as is well known, lie very close, and no 

 doubt many a one is passed by unsuspected, as the two following instances 

 will shew: — One of my boys, when out shooting this winter, came within 

 a yard of one before he saw it, and he had to go back some way before 

 he could shoot it. Near the same place, a couple of months afterwards, 

 a tenant struck one with his whip as it lay on the ground close to him. 

 — F. 0. Morris, March 13th., 1857. 



TO THE EDITOR OF "THE NATURALIST." 



I am indebted to the kindness of J. Gwyn Jeffreys, Esq., for permission 

 to send to your periodical the following extract from a letter, the result 

 of an examination kindly undertaken by him of the small Slcenea found 

 by me at Falmouth, which I at first considered a new species, (a short 

 account of which appeared in "The Naturalist" a few months ago,) and a 

 careful comparison of it with a specimen taken by himself in the Medi- 

 terranean, and also a series of the ordinary form of Slcenea rota, taken by 

 me in a living state at the Land's End, and other parts of the Cornish 

 coast: — "The result of a careful comparison of these specimens induces me 

 to retain the opinion I at first formed, that your Slcenea tricurvata is only 

 a variety of S. rota; your species appears to differ from S. rota in its some- 

 what smaller size, in the whorls being flatter and more angular, (the latter 

 character being probably attributable to the greater prominence and dis- 

 tinctness of the ridges,) and in the transverse ribs being less marked, and 

 not so nodulose as in the typical form. My specimens from the Mediter- 

 ranean belong to this variety. All the specimens have three spiral ridges, 

 one of them encircling the periphery, and forming an obtuse keel, another 

 on the upper side, and a third on the lower side in the centre of each 

 whorl. The ridges are nearly equidistant from each other, and their direc- 

 tion is marked by a fulvous band; this character has not, I believe, been 

 observed by any one except yourself. I however give this opinion with 

 some reservation, as I should have preferred to have had an opportunity of 

 comparing your specimens with others which I have taken myself from 

 various parts of the British and Irish coasts; this, unfortunately, I cannot 

 do at present while I am divorced from my cabinets." — W. Webster, Upton 

 Hall, Birkenhead, February 9th., 1857. 



