230 BIRDS OF CHESHIRE. 
previously.1 Dr. Dobie, who has carefully examined 
the bird and investigated the occurrence, writes us as 
follows:—‘I paid a visit to Wm. Lawton, Denhall, on 
January 2nd, 1898, and the following note I made 
immediately afterwards :—“ Mr. William Lawton is an 
intelligent man of about sixty-five years of age, with 
all his faculties about him. He has shot many birds 
in the marshes and has taken an interest in stuffing 
them. He has sons who are sailors and have sent 
him home birds from various parts. Many of them 
he has put up in a large case. He has also a case 
of English seabirds, and amongst them a specimen of 
a Cape Pigeon, of which he gives the history and for 
which he does not claim any British origin. He has 
not put up any case for twenty years. Questioned 
about the Noddy Tern which he let Mr. Francis 
Congreve have, he says that ‘he set no store by it.’ 
He always considered it a kind of ‘Mother Carey’s 
Chicken,’ of which he says he has shot different 
kinds. He shot the Noddy about seven years ago 
(or it might have been more), about five hundred 
yards from Denhall Quay. He thinks it was in 
winter. He stuffed it himself, cut a stand for it with 
a circular saw and ‘granited’ it over. The bird came 
flying past him (7.e. he did not flush it). It was never 
put in a case, but was knocking about the house. 
He is absolutely certain that it is the bird he shot. 
That he is perfectly honest in this belief there can 
be no question: the weak point in the evidence is 
that there are foreign birds in his house which have 
been sent him by his sons, and there is the possibility 
that a Noddy thus obtained may have been confused 
in his mind with the bird he shot. He, however, 
1 Field, vol. xc. p. 592. 1897. Cf. Zoologist, ser. Iv. vol. i. p. 510. 
