638 ALAUDID^. 



that month ; and shortly afterwards he sent the specimen to 

 me for my examination. 



The occurrence of five other examples in this country, 

 with the asserted capture of a sixth, has now been recorded. 

 All of these birds appeared on the south coast of England : 

 three of them at or near Brighton — namely in September 

 1854 (Zool. p. 4558), April 1858 (Ibis, 1859, p. 330), and 

 November 1873 (Zool. s.s. p. 3832) ; one near Southampton 

 (Zool. p. 7930) in the winter of 1861-62, whose captor said 

 he had taken another ten years before ; and one shot at Scilly 

 (Zool. p. 4477) almost simultaneously with the occurrence 

 of the first Brighton example, which as well as the last bird 

 obtained at this place and that procured near Southampton 

 were netted, and lived for a longer or shorter time in cap- 

 tivity. 



This species seems to have been discovered by M. Castelnau 

 near Montpellier and made known to his friend and teacher 

 Leisler, who first described and figured it in 1814, stating 

 that it occurred in Italy* as well as in the south of France, 

 and supposed that it might also inhabit Germany, an an- 

 ticipation that has hardly been realized, for though, as all 

 ornithologists are aware, its manners have been studied and 

 recorded at great length by numerous observers in many 

 parts of the world, its appearance in Germany is as rare as 

 in England. Herr Gatke includes it in his list of stragglers 

 to Heligoland, and, according to M. de Selys, it has oc- 

 curred accidentally in summer in Lorraine, as well as in 

 Picardy. It has been killed near Paris and is found in 

 Champagne where Vieillotf, on the authority of M. de Rio- 

 court, says it is very numerous, arriving there towards the 

 end of April, affecting dry, sandy places, and breeding 

 several times in the course of the summer. As soon as the 

 young of the last brood can shift for themselves the different 



* Bonelli in Italy indeed may have anticipated the French discovery, but he, 

 according to Dr. Salvadori (Faun, d'ltal. i. p. 134), never published any description 

 of the Alaucla calandreUa as he seems to have called the species in 1811. 



■f" He did not know of the i^rior discovery of the species and, thinking it was 

 new to science, named it in 1816 Alauda arenaria (N. Diet, d Hist. Nat. Ed. 2, 

 i. p. 343). 



