PALLAS'S SAND GROUSE 351 



in the collection of Mr. W. Prentis, who also states that 

 " the year 1888 was the second Sand-Grouse year, four 

 were seen upon a ploughed field for several days in the 

 parish of Hoo, near Rochester. On December 14 a male 

 was picked up dead, with the head cut clean off by the 

 telegraph wires, on the Isle of Grain railway ; another, 

 I believe, was shot about the same time near Sheerness." 



There is a specimen in Mr. W. Oxenden Hammond's 

 collection, now in the Canterbury Museum, obtained in 

 Kent in 1888, without exact locality attached. 



In the Zoologist, 1888, p. 264, Mr. J. E. Harting adds 

 the following note from Mr. H. S. D. Byron, of Bromstone 

 Farm, St. Peter's, Thanet : " Will you kindly allow me 

 to place on record in the Zoologist what I have not the 

 least doubt was an occurrence of Pallas's Sand-Grouse in 

 this neighbourhood (St. Peter's, Thanet). A bird was 

 first seen on May 30, and was then feeding on a field 

 of recently sown spring tares. What first attracted my 

 attention to it was that it did not rise and fly away when 

 I entered the field, as was done by several wald Eock- 

 Doves, which were feeding near it. However, it would 

 not allow a very near approach, but ran with consider- 

 able speed over the ground with its body close down, and 

 looking almost like a small animal. When at last I made 

 it fly, by a dog I had with me, it went at a very rapid 

 pace, and looked much like a Golden Plover, only larger, 

 uttering, as it flew, a low piping note. On the morning 

 of the following day (May 31), this bird again made its 

 appearance in the same field, but all attempts to get near 

 it were futile. I must not omit to say that the colour, as 

 seen from a distance, was light greyish-brown." 



