338 Mr. W. Thompson on the Breeding of 



May 1, 1769? and another brace the day before; they were 

 sitting on their young*." This author gives one other in- 

 stance, in which a friend of his met with a woodcock on its 

 nest, in a wood near Farningham, Kent. In his Ornithological 

 Dictionaryt, Montagu mentions his having received eggs of 

 this bird from near Battel in Sussex; and in the Supplement 

 to the same work, relates, on the authority of Mr. Foljambe, 

 that in May 1802, a half-fledged woodcock was taken in 

 Brodsworth Wood, near Doncaster, in Yorkshire; and that 

 on the 5th of April 1805, a brood of four was hatched at 

 Shireoaks, near Worksop, Nottinghamshire. Mr. Selby nar- 

 rates, that " in Northumberland, the woodcock has been 

 known to breed in the woods about Netherwitton," and adds, 

 " I have now in my collection eggs taken from a nest in Pig- 

 don Wood, not far from Morpeth J." Within the last few 

 years we learn from the ' Proceedings of the Zoological So- 

 ciety of London,' and the periodicals devoted to Natural Hi- 

 story§, that the number of woodcocks nesthng in England and 

 Scotland is greatly on the increase ; and, as may be inferred, 

 the number of these birds occurring during summer in Ire- 

 land has likewise been increasing within the same period. 



Of the woodcock's actual breeding in this country I have 

 not seen any record, and of its presence here in summer only 

 the following notice, which appeared first in a newspaper — 

 the Belfast Commercial Chronicle — and subsequently in a more 

 abiding place, having been transferred to the pages of the 

 Magazine of Natural History. " On the 8th of August 1828, 

 a fine woodcock was shot in Florida demesne, county of Down ; 

 as it was seen in the course of the spring, it is supposed to 

 have remained in the country since last winter," vol. ii. p. 87. 

 By the late T. F. Neligan, Esq., of Tralee, a young and ardent 

 naturalist (whose recent death is much to be deplored), I was 

 informed that a woodcock had been seen in the county of 

 Kerry in the month of July 1832 |j. In the county of Antrim, 



* Gen. Syn. of Birds, vol. iii. part i. p. 130. 1785. 



f Published in 1802; the Supp. in 1813 : see article Woodcock. 



+ Illus. Brit. Orn. vol. ii. p. 108. 1833. 



§ See Magazine of Natural History, vol. i. p. 83 ; vol. ii. p. 86 ; vol. v. 

 p. 570 ; vol. viii. p. 612; vol. ix. p. 543. — New Series, vol. i. p. 52, 121, 

 337, 439. 



II It is thought proper to notice odd birds seen at this season, as they can 



