260 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



leave it in the hands of an intelligent jury;" merely ob- 

 serving that there surely never was a bird about which so 

 much misapprehension has existed, — a misapprehension 

 which I read extends even to the continent My next 

 reference will be to the " Zoologist," (p. 2684) where 

 Mr. T. J. Tuck has recorded one at Mildenhall in Suffolk. 

 He saw it soon after being mounted. It was shot, as he has 

 informed me, about February, 1869, and the possessor of it 

 is Mr. Gregory Sparke of Bury. Then I hear that it has 

 a place in Rowe's " Perambulation of the Forest of Dart- 

 moor," but I have not the book to refer to. There is no 

 mention of it in his catalogue published in 1863, so I 

 pass it by as suspicious and go on to those figured in 

 Mr. Selby's splendid folios, which are equally doubtful. I 

 could not see them in the Twizell collection which I went 

 over shortly after his death. 



With regard to Scotland, there is an air of probability 

 about the pair* recorded in Gray's " Birds of the West of 

 Scotland," (p. 299) to have been obtained in August, 1870, 

 at or near Aberdeen, which no one can deny, and I must 

 say that all the careful ' enquiries which I have made from 

 Mr. Angus and Mr. Mitchell, have not shaken the authen- 

 ticity of these specimens, but have entirely tended to con- 

 firm them. I am assured on all hands of their genuineness, 

 that they were left while in the flesh at the Museum, that 

 the stomachs were sent to Mr. Gray for dissection, and that 

 they really were killed where stated. The species is also 

 in the statistical catalogue of Wick in Caithness, but 

 Mr. W. Reid, who has examined the bird for me, writes that 

 it is not a Spotted Sandpiper, and from his description I have 

 no doubt that he is right in considering it to be a Spotted 

 Redshank, a very different bird with which it has more 



'■' A photograph of them was obligingly sent to me, and I have since 

 had an opportunity of examining one of them at Mr. Gray's house. 



