392 SYLVlID^l. 



work nests which could not be assigned to any of the 

 known kinds of fen-hirds, and this fact was learned by 

 Harvey, who dealt in various objects of natural history. The 

 people of the district were also aware of a reddish-brown bird, 

 having a peculiar song, often heard at night, not altogether 

 unlike that of the Grasshopper- Warbler or Eeeler, but still 

 quite distinct; and this bird they called indifferently the 

 "Brown," "Bed" or " Night-Keeler." Instigated by his 

 customers, Harvey at length procured from the fen-men 

 specimens of this bird, and a few years later its fresh nests 

 and eggs. The earliest of the former so obtained seem to 

 have passed into Mr. Baker's hands, as just stated, and the 

 first of the latter, taken in May, 1845, were purchased by 

 Mr. Bond, who distributed the eggs to several of his friends 

 among others to the author of this work, to the Editor of 

 the ' Zoologist,' by whom they were described in that maga- 

 zine for January, 1846 (p. 1212), and to Mr. Hewitson, who 

 in the same year figured a specimen (Eggs of Brit. Birds, 

 pi. xxv*.).* Since that time other birds, nests and eggs have 

 been procured from the same district namely, a sedge-fen, 

 now for several years reclaimed, in the parish of Milton, 

 the great Burwell fen, also completely drained, and Wicken 

 fen, which still grows sedge as well as from Wood- Walton 

 fen in Huntingdonshire, now under the plough, but whence 

 in 1849 Mr. Hudleston obtained a nest and eggs. Since the 

 date last mentioned no specimens of the bird seem to have 

 been procured from any of these places. 



Keturning now to Norfolk, the scene of the original finding 

 of the species, Mr. Gurney in 1843 obtained a pair of birds 

 killed at South Walsham, and Mr. Frere has one from the 



* Mr. Bond is thus entitled to the merit of having been the first to bring the 

 discovery of the eggs and very peculiar nest of this species to the knowledge of 

 naturalists the notices just cited having anticipated the publication of the third 

 part of Thienemann's ' Fortpflanzungsgeschi elite der gesammten Vb'gel,' which 

 is said to have appeared in 1848, and contains a figure of its egg (Taf. xxi. fig. 

 12), while he in his fifth part, said to have been published in 1850, gave (p. 202), 

 from the experience of Herr Lb'bbecke, a good account of its nidification as ob- 

 served by him in Holland. Subsequently, in 1856, Thienemann figured (Taf. ic. 

 figs. 12, a-c) three more eggs, of which no account appears in his letter-press. 



