PTEROCLID^. 



475 



PALLAS'S SAND-GROUSE. 



Syrrhaptes paradoxus (Pallas). 



No event in the annals of ornithology has excited more interest 

 than the irruptions of Pallas's Sand-Grouse, which, as regards the 

 British Islands, were first called to notice by a few appearances in 

 Norfolk, Cardigan and Kent, in July and November 1859; while 

 several examples were obtained on the Continent during the same 

 year. In 1863 the ripples of a far larger wave of invasion spread 

 westward over Europe; Heligoland being reached by May 21st, 

 the date on which our first visitors of that year were shot in 

 Northumberland, out of a flock of fourteen. Next day about 

 twenty reached Staffordshire, and numbers were subsequently found 

 in many parts of the British Islands ; the majority on the eastern 

 side, from Kent to Caithness, though a few alighted in the Shetlands. 

 Inland, as well as in the south of England, occurrences were not 

 wanting ; and. while less plentiful in the west, it was in Pem- 

 brokeshire that the last survivor was shot, in February 1S64. One 

 bird even wandered to Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, and several 

 were killed in Ireland, some of them as far west as co. Donegal. All 



