OTIS TETRAX. yey 
On the 18th of February, 1856, I wrote to Dr. Sinclair a letter in 
which were the following words :—TI am still extremely anxious to 
hear more about it, for I have reason for thinking it may have bred 
in the county. Do you remember anything of the sexual appearance 
on dissection? Is the belly denuded of feathers? The points I wish 
to establish are—Ist. For how long the bird was seen, and how was it 
killed, and on what kind of ground? 2nd. Was any other of the same 
kind seen in company? 3rd. Was there any reason to suppose there 
was anest? 4th. If there were eggs, what became of them? I think 
it might still be possible to get this information. What do you think 
of an advertisement in some Caithness paper that if the person &c.?” 
Some time in March I received a ‘John o’ Groat’s Journal’ of 
29 February, 1856, with the advertisement. 
[A copy of the advertisement was pasted by Mr. Wolley ix his Ege-book, 
but there is no need to insert it here. It is so cautiously worded that I think 
it must have been his own composition. However, no result followed, and if 
Dr. Sinclair ever wrote again to him, the letter is not forthcoming. Where- 
ever the egg was laid one can hardly doubt its being a Little Bustard’s, and if 
not laid in Caithness iis possession by Mr. Cramond is hard to explain, while 
the coincident occurrence in the district of a hen bird of that species, which 
might have dropped it, is too remarkable to be neglected. In Messrs, Harvie- 
Brown and Buckley’s ‘ Vertebrate Fauna of Sutherland, Caithness, and 
West Cromarty’ (Edinburgh : 1887), where extracts from Mr. Wolley’s Ege- 
book eoncerning this matter are given, it is inadvertently stated (p. 209) that he 
was shewn the bird ‘a year or two after 1848,” whereas it was certainly in that 
year that he saw it, and, as appears from what is said above, it had not been 
very long killed, for Mr. Sinclair had not completed the stuffing of it. ] 
§ 3218. Three —France. From M. Parzudaki, 1856. 
§ 3219. Zwo—Dyendeli, Algeria, 16 May, 1857. From 
Mr. Salvin. 
Two nests brought by an Arab—one of four, the other of three eggs, 
but mixed—with the two hen birds. The Arabs make a rush and 
throw their burnoose over the bird as she runs off. Mr. Salvin took 
one nest himself, which had only two eggs, but the birds have three 
or four. They build in the corn—a hole scooped, with a few bits of 
grass in it, 
[Mr. Salvin’s notes on the nidification of this bird in Algeria are in ‘The Ibis’ 
for 1859 (p. 353). | 
