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ALPINE ACCENTOR. 501 
ACCENTOR ALPINUS. 
ALPINE ACCENTOR. 
(PuateE 12.) 
Sturnus collaris, Scop, Ann. I. Hist. Nat. p. 131 (1769). 
_ Sturnus moritanus, Gmel. Syst. Nat. i. p. 804 (1788). 
Motacilla alpina, Gmel, Syst. Nat. i. p. 957 (1788); et auctorum plurimorum— 
(Bechstein), (Lemminck), (Nawnann), (Bonaparte), (Degland § Gerbe), (Gray), 
( Gebel), (Macgillivray), (Hewitson), (Salvadori), (Severtzow), (darting), (Bog- 
danow), (Nordmann), (Radde), &c. 
Accentor alpinus (Gmel.), Bechst. Orn. Taschenb. i. p. 191 (1802). 
Accentor collaris (Scop.), Newt. ed. Yarr. Br. B.i. p. 296 (1873). 
The Alpine Accentor is a purely accidental visitor to the British Islands. 
It does not appear to have ever occurred in Scotland or in Ireland. It 
was first recorded as a British bird by the late Dr. Thackeray, who men- 
tions, in the ‘ Zoological Journal’ for 1824 (p. 134), a female that was 
shot in the garden of King’s College, Cambridge. It was obtained on the 
22nd of November 1822. An example of the Alpine Accentor had, how- 
ever, been previously obtained in this country in the autumn of 1817, 
although the fact was not chronicled until 1832, in the ‘ Magazine of 
Natural History,’ vol. v. p. 288. Ten other examples have been obtained 
in England, chiefly in the southern counties, although one specimen has 
been captured near Scarborough; and Mr. Howard Saunders met with a 
bird of this species on one of the Welsh mountains. , 
The Alpine Accentor breeds throughout the mountains of Southern 
Europe, the Sierra Nevada in South Spain, the Pyrenees, the Alps, the 
mountains of Greece and Asia Minor, and the Caucasus, extending into 
Northern Persia. Examples from Turkestan are more chestnut on the 
flanks, approaching 4. nipalensis in this respect ; otherwise they do not 
differ in colour from European specimens. ‘The latter species is found in 
the Himalayas and the mountains of Western China, being represented in 
South-eastern Siberia by a very nearly allied form (A. erythropygius) with 
a much more rufous rump. 
I have never had the good fortune to meet with the Alpine Accentor on 
any of my excursions. It is therefore necessary to do as Newton, Dresser, 
- and even Naumann have been obliged to do—compile a history of this bird 
from the writings of others. Naumann’s information was principally 
supplied to him by Dr. Schinz of Zurich ; and the ‘ Journal fiir Oruitho- 
logie’ contains observations by Alexander von Homeyer in the mountain 
range which separates Bohemia from Silesia, by Graf Wodzicki in the 
