150 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
ARDEA GARZETTA, Linnzus. 
LITTLE EGRET. 
This beautiful species has not hitherto been included 
in the list of Norfolk rarities ; but whilst there is reason 
to believe that others have occurred, the following 
authentic instance fully entitles it to a place in the 
present work. In 1864, when staying at Worthing, Mr. 
J. H. Gurney was informed by Mr. Wells, a local bird- 
stuffer, that he had recently seen a Little Egret, said to 
have been killed near Norwich, in the possession of 
Dr. Diamond, of Twickenham. Further enquiry fully 
confirmed this statement, and from the particulars kindly 
forwarded to me by Dr. Diamond, it appears that this 
specimen was sent him as a “strange bird” about 1834 
or 1835, by Mr. Roger Stoughton, of Sparham, who, 
as an old schoolfellow, under Valpy, at the Norwich 
Grammar School, knew his ornithological tastes. The 
bird was forwarded in the flesh, and was preserved by 
a birdstuffer who subsequently went to America and 
died there. 
Mr. Clarke, of Saffron Walden, who nearly forty 
years ago spent several winters at Yarmouth collecting 
natural history objects, and was well acquainted with 
all the local collectors at that time, was informed by 
the late Mr. Leonard Rudd that the little egret was 
“sometimes met with near Yarmouth,” and there is 
not much reason to doubt that the specimen sold in 
1853, with the rest of Mr. Stephen Miller’s Yarmouth 
collection was killed in that neighbourhood, but I cannot 
ascertain by whom it was purchased. 
Mr. Lubbock refers to a statement in Loudon’s 
“Magazine of Natural History” for 1836 (vol. ix., p. 
320), by the Rev. E. Ventris, of Cambridge, wherein 
the writer says he had “recently been informed that 
