SPOET OF BUTE. 113 



My authority for these facts is unimpeachable, 

 and at the service of any one who- thinks it worth 

 while to demand it. 



It may be from their uniform black inviting 

 attention, but no birds show the Albino stain 

 more frequently than blackbirds or rooks. I have 

 seen these opposite " extremes " of colour " meet " 

 in the rook almost every season. I shot a young 

 one in the rookery here with a white bill, another 

 with white nails to its toes ; a third had white 

 wings, the most common phase of this lusus na- 

 turae. The contradiction of a whole nest of white 

 blackbirds, and another of white rooks, in both cases 

 the parents being black, was the most unaccount- 

 able freak that nature could possibly play.* 



* A notice of a white sparrow in the ' Scotsman' gave rise 

 to this reply : 



" WHITE SPARROWS. 



" KAMES CASTLE, Oct. 10, 1865. 



"Sm, The white sparrow of Leith Walk is not the rara 

 avis the correspondents of the ' Scotsman ' suppose. 



" I have one in my collection at 1 Royal Terrace, shot by 

 my son in the barrack square of Dundalk. In the same case 

 is another with white wings, shot by myself at a farm-stead- 

 ing near Joppa. Another buff sparrow haunts the village of 

 Port-Bannatyne, close to this place. Another white-winged 

 H 



