Letters, Extracts from Correspondence, Notices, ^c, 375 



Brown Snipe, Knot, Curlew, Sandpiper, Red-breasted Goose, 

 Smew, and Steller's Western Duck are all inserted in their 

 proper places. Not even the Ivory Gull is wanting. We can 

 only hope that the buyers of these rarities will not feel any 

 scepticism on the part of their friends as to the value of their 

 purchases to be a personal insult. 



But the first catalogue is simple and uncircumstantial. We 

 now come to the second. This is a well-printed pamphlet of 36 

 pages, a neat imitation and enlargement of one of Mr. Wolley's, 

 containing an amount of information on the geographical distri- 

 bution of British birds which is positively startling. We com- 

 mence with an egg of the Egyptian Vulture, taken in Guernsey, 

 followed by that of an Osprey, which we would rather have seen 

 in its former home in Mr. Salmon^s collection, reposing in the 

 peaceful stillness of the Linnean rooms. Then there is a Hobby's 

 egg from Alnwick, said to have been T. Bewick's. Perhaps the 

 connexion is attained by the consideration that Bewick and Aln- 

 wick are both Northumbrian, which the Hobby as certainly is not. 

 Then we have three of the same articles from the Isle of Arran, 

 which no sceptic can doubt ; for the date is given as June 4, 1847; 

 and that must be proof ! Further north still we go, and discover 

 the novel fact that Goshawks breed in Caithness, verified again by 

 the exact date and locality. We return to Arran, and find there 

 the Rough-legged Buzzard breeding year after year; and as a 

 further proof thereof, we are told that Mr. Salmon once offered 

 £o worth of eggs in exchange for a specimen from this lot. 

 Again, we find, after picking up the Swallow-tailed Kite in 

 Mexico, Montagu's Harrier laying eggs at Alnwick, where no 

 Northumbrian ever met with it. Indeed, Arran and Alnwick 

 seem the favoured resorts of these phenomena, and Mr. New- 

 ton's injunctions as to marking the date and place of capture on 

 each specimen have been faithfully obeyed. The capture of a 

 Snowy Owl's egg at Anhalt, on the 5th of June, would indeed 

 have been news to Mr. Wolley. But it is really a waste of time 

 to examine in detail this romance of ornithology. It is enough 

 to say that among the birds breeding in Arran are men- 

 tioned the Scops Owl, Richard's Pipit, Three-toed Woodpecker 

 {Apternus tridactylus — not yet a British bird), Turtle-Dove, 



