birds claiming to be accounted british. 255 



Spotted Sandpiper. 



Some time ago I set myself to collect all the recorded 

 instances of the Spotted Sandpiper in Britain, and a most 

 extraordinary task I found I was in for. I was indeed 

 astonished at the number of ox:currences, but still more at 

 the feeble foundation on which most of them rested. I 

 ended by collecting such a tangled skein of conflicting 

 evidence, that I laid the job aside in sheer despair, but 

 have now gone through it again, and present a careful 

 resume with all the proof and all the disproof that I ob- 

 tained. The 277th plate of Edwards' " Gleanings of Natural 

 History," to start with the original offender, represents the 

 Spotted Sandpiper from Pennsylvania. This distinguished 

 naturalist and talented draughtsman fancied that it was 

 also found in England, and in the accompanying letterpress 

 he mentions a specimen from Essex, which " differed in no 

 respect from the American Tringa, but in being withoiit 

 spots on its under side, except on the throat, where it had a 

 few small, longish, dusky spots down the shafts of the 

 feathers" (VI., p. 141). 



Of course the want of spots shows it to have been a 

 Common Sandpiper, but I have still further proof I have 

 found a MS. note in the handwriting of Donovan, in a copy 

 of Montagu's Dictionary (in the possession of Canon 

 Tristram), saying that this bird, after standing in the 

 Leverian Museum twenty years, passed to him. Therefore 

 it is a fair surmise that Plate CLXXXIV. of his " British 

 Birds " is its portrait, and no one would want to be told 

 after looking at it that it represents the Common, not the 

 Spotted Sandpiper. 



And now we come to the so-called Spotted Sandpiper of 

 Bewick (B. B., ist ed., II., p. in), which is the specimen 

 mentioned in Wallis' " History of Northumberland." His 

 admirable woodcut, which is much too accurate to leave 



