2/0 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



the right sort ; but in a fit of remorse he saved some of the 

 feathers, which he handed to Mr. Sparshall, who afterwards 

 gave them to my father, but we cannot find them now. 



Accounts differ as to whether the slayer of that one killed 

 at Berwick was a Mr. Burney or a Mr. Innes of Oserwick ; 

 but it does not much signify, as I consider it well established 

 that it really was killed there. 



Mr. Moore, in his first catalogue of Devonshire birds, sets 

 it down among the birds not hitherto noticed in the county, 

 but in his second (Mag. of N. H., 1837, p. 266) he has two 

 to bring forward, the first shot at Kenton Warren in 1828, 

 and in the possession of the late Mr. W. Russell of Dawlish ; 

 the second, shot February 21st, 1837, on the Teign marshes. 

 I cannot verify them by ascertaining into whose hands they 

 have now passed, so I can only hope that the next historian 

 of the birds of that part of England will take the subject 

 up and be more successful. 



I am sorry that I can place but little confidence in the 

 example affirmed by Mr. Hogg, to have been shot at 

 Cowpen near Teesmouth, by a man named Hikely (Zool., 

 p. 1178) ; but when I lived at Darlington I saw Hikely's son, 

 and the account he gave me was so very much the reverse 

 of reassuring, that I am constrained to let it go to the limbo 

 of the doubtful. 



Mr. T. Amherst possesses a specimen, said to have been 

 killed at Hastings, in 1866, but I have my suspicions about 

 that also.* 



It is a bird which has always commanded a long price. 

 I have tried more than once to obtain a specimen, but until 

 this month (Dec, 1875) I never got an offer of one at a 

 lower figure than eight pounds. This is a small sum to 

 what some of the British specimens have fetched. Mr. Hunt 



* Two Red-breasted Geese are believed to have been once killed 

 near Garstang (Zool., ss., 3236.). 



