16 SCOLOPACIDJ3. 



arriving at Downham, Sir Henry Peyton's residence, 

 twenty-four hours after the Woodcock was shot, and hear- 

 ing the particulars ; but the bird had been dressed. 



" Mr. Roger Wilbraham, a great sportsman, living at 

 Swaffham, not believing the account, summoned the car- 

 penter many years afterwards, who confirmed all the cir- 

 cumstances. 



" The Earl of Leicester also told me, that he, in com- 

 pany with Mr. Ralph Button, when they were young men, 

 followed a gigantic-looking Woodcock for some hours, near 

 Holkham, but could not get near him. 



" A Woodcock shot at Audley End about seven years 

 ago, weighed full sixteen ounces, and was much the largest- 

 looking bird, as well as the heaviest, I ever saw." 



A note in the last edition of Pennant's British Zoology 

 is as follows : " I have been credibly informed that one was 

 killed near Holywell, which reached the weight of twenty 

 ounces ;" and in Daniel's Rural Sports there is a record of 

 one which weighed seventeen ounces. 



Varieties in plumage are not uncommon, sometimes with 

 a portion of white, or entirely of a dull yellowish white, or 

 buif colour. 



A communication was lately made to the Zoological 

 Society to the following effect. In the year 1833 a Wood- 

 cock with white feathers in the wings was observed in a 

 cover on the manor of Monkleigh, near Torrington, in the 

 county of Devon. The same bird, or one of exactly similar 

 plumage, reappeared in the same place during the four 

 succeeding seasons, in which period it was so repeatedly 

 shot at by different persons without effect, that it at last 

 acquired among the country people the name of 'the 

 witch/ In the year 1837, however, it was killed by John 

 Piper, of Monkleigh, while following the owner of the 



