CREAM-COLOURED COURSER. 239 



The earliest occurrence on record of the Cream-coloured 

 Courser in England appears to be that of the specimen shot 

 in 1785 by William Hammond, Esq., of St. Alban's Court, 

 near "VVingham, in East Kent, who presented the specimen 

 to Latham, with the following account: "He first met 

 with it, running upon some light land ; and so little fearful 

 was it, that after he had sent for a gun, one was brought to 

 him, which having been charged some time, did not readily 

 go off, and in consequence he missed his aim. The report 

 frightened the bird away ; but after making a turn or two, it 

 again settled within a hundred yards of him, when he was 

 prepared with a second shot, which despatched it. It was 

 observed to run with incredible swiftness, and, at intervals, 

 to pick up something from the ground ; and was so bold as 

 to render it difficult to make it rise from the ground, in 

 order to take a more secure aim on the wing. The note 

 was not like that of any kind of Plover, nor, indeed, to be 

 compared with that of any known bird."* (Synop. Birds, 

 Supp. I. p. 254, pi. cxvi.) This example, which the plate 

 shews to be an immature bird, passed into the Leverian 

 Museum, and having subsequently been purchased by Dono- 

 van for eighty-three guineas, it found its way to the British 

 Museum. 



The next instance is that of the bird mentioned by 

 Montagu (Supp. Orn. Diet.) as having been shot in North 

 Wales in 1793, by Mr. George Kingston of Queen's College, 

 Oxford, and preserved in the collection of the late Professor 

 Sibthorp of that city. A third specimen, recorded in Atkin- 

 son's ' Compendium of British Ornithology,' was shot on 

 some dry fallow ground near Wetherby, in Yorkshire, in 

 April, 1816 ; a fourth is said by Gould (B. of Gt. Britain) 

 to have been killed in the same county in 1825 by one of 

 Lord Harewood's keepers ; and a fifth is stated to have 

 been obtained at Holme, near Market Weighton, in the 



* The date is not mentioned, but from the tenor of Latham's letter, dated 

 12th December, 1785, acknowledging the gift (communicated to Mr. Gould by 

 Mr. W. 0. Hammond, the grandson of the donor), it would appear that the bird 

 was killed a short time previously. 



