SYLVIIN/E. 



87 



THE AQUATIC WARBLER. 



AcROCEPHALUS AQUATicus (J. F. Gmeliii). 



Owing to the similarity of the Aquatic \\'arbler to the preceding 

 species, all the earlier examples obtained in England appear to 

 have been originally overlooked. Professor Newton was the first 

 to recognize a specimen in the collection of Mr. W. Borrer, who said 

 that it had been shot on October 19th 1853, while creeping about 

 among the grass and reeds in an old brick-pit near Hove, Sussex. 

 This example having been exhibited before the Zoological Society 

 (P. Z. S. 1866, p. 210), it was subsequently examined by Mr. Harting, 

 who announced (Ibis 1867, p. 469) that he also possessed an Aquatic 

 Warbler, obtained near Loughborough, in Leicestershire, in the 

 summer of 1864, and forwarded to him by a friend, under the 

 impression that it was a Grasshopper-Warbler. In February 1871, 

 Mr. J. H. Gurney detected in the Museum at Dover a third example, 

 which the Curator, the late Mr. C. Gordon, stated that he had shot 

 near that town. Mr. Gurney has further pointed out that the bird 

 figured as a Sedge- Warbler in Hunt's ' British Ornithology ' was 

 undoubtedly an Aquatic Warbler, in all probability obtained in 

 Norfolk about the year 1815. Lastly, an example was shot at 

 Blakeney, Norfolk, on September 8th 1896. The conspicuous buff 



