154 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
him to have been killed many years ago at Flixton, 
near Bungay, Suffolk. 
BOTAURUS MINUTUS (Linneus). 
LITTLE BITTERN. 
Norfolk is not only remarkable for the number of 
scarce species known to have occurred within its bound- 
aries, but, also, as in the present instance, for the 
number of specimens procured of birds, regarded as 
rarities in any part of Great Britain. No doubt 
from time immemorial the Little Bittern, as an occa- 
sional straggler, has sought shelter in the luxuriant 
herbage of the “Broad” district, nor is it at all. 
improbable that this species may even have remained 
with us, at times, to breed,* having been found in pairs 
* Although believing in the possibility of the little bittern 
having bred in Norfolk, I have no satisfactory evidence that 
the eggs have ever been taken, and I think it, therefore, the more 
necessary to refer to a note in the Huddersfield “ Naturalist” for 
1866 (vol. ii., p. 366), in which Mr. R. B. Sharpe states that he had 
just added to his collection “ the following genwine eggs collected in 
Norfolk last season by a gentleman,” viz., the yellow-billed cuckoo, 
rock thrush, little bittern, golden oriole, roseate tern, and sandwich 
tern. This marvellous statement, so strangely differing from my 
local experience, led to further correspondence (vol. i., pp. 22 
and 45), and the discovery that the genuineness of these rare 
Norfolk eggs rested solely on the word of a London dealer, the 
gentleman who collected them having most conveniently left for 
Norway. Norfolk is unquestionably a rich ornithological county, 
and a most likely district for any mendacious dealer to assign for 
rare eggs or birds which he desires to palm off as British, but the 
selection, in this instance, was particularly unfortunate, inasmuch 
as neither the yellow-billed cuckoo nor the rock-thrush have yet 
been observed in Norfolk; the roseate tern is only once recorded 
