396 BIEDS OP NORFOLK. 



considerable pains to ascertain accurately the plants on 

 wliicli such birds as came under bis personal observation 

 bad been feeding, and tbe following statement was 

 received by bim from no less an authority than Professor 

 C. C. Babington, of Cambridge, after an examination of 

 the different seeds from the crop of one of the Holme 

 specimens : — " Most are the fruit and seeds of Arenaria, 

 or rather Lepigonum ruhrum, numbered 1 on the 

 paper ; 2, is a seed of Polygonum ; 3, the tip of a 

 moss ; 4, seeds of another kind of Polygonum (they 

 must have been some time in the bird's crop, for they 

 have commenced growing) ; 5, appear to be fruiting 

 flowers of Poa j 6, I fancy belong to Sagina or Arenaria^ 

 but I have not succeeded in naming them to my own 

 satisfaction. All these names are, of course, open to alter- 

 ation, but I quite think that they are correct." Besides 

 the above, Mr. Southwell also distmguished the seeds of 

 Le;pigonum marinum, of which there appears to have been 

 none in the crop submitted to Professor Babington ; and, 

 in a letter to myself, he adds, " I think we may consider 

 that their food in this country consisted entirely of the 

 seeds of plants proper to the sandy coast upon which 

 they were found. The fact of the seeds being all those 

 of British plants, probably shows that they had been 

 on the coast some days." Mr. Alfred Newton, to whom 

 the carcases of two of the Holme specimens were sent 

 by Mr. Southwell for the purpose of dissection, proposed 

 a careful examination of the small flinty substances 

 found so abundantly in the gizzards, suggesting that 

 some mineralogist might recognise in them " fragments 

 washed down into the Kirghish Steppes from the Altai 

 mountains ; or that the birds might have renewed their 

 stock of grindstones as they crossed the Ural." Acting 

 upon this hint, Mr. Southwell submitted some of them 

 to a geological friend, who writes as follows : — " As to 

 the stones found in the gizzard, I do not think they 



