Birds. 9249 
in Yarrell’s ‘ British Birds’ (2nd edition, vol. ii. p. 134),* where, in 
enumerating the various records of the appearance of this species in 
England, that author says:—“A few years since a communication 
was made to the Zoological Society of London, that two examples of 
the great black woodpecker had been at that time killed in a small 
wood near Scole Inn, in Norfolk.” 
This note, on Mr. Yarrell’s authority, has been since copied by 
Macgillivray and Morris, and amongst local authors by the Rev. R. 
Lubbock, in his ‘Fauna,’ by Messrs. Gurney and Fisher, in the ‘ Zoolo- 
gist’ for 1846 (Zool. 1315), and still more recently by myself in a paper 
on the “ Ornithology of Norfolk,” written in 1863 for the third edition 
of White’s ‘Gazetteer’ of this county (see also ‘Zoologist, 1864, 
p- 9025). I had long had an impression that in this instance a 
mistake might have arisen between the great spotted and the great 
black woodpecker, when this idea was confirmed very recently by cir- 
cumstances originating in a conversation with Mr. Spalding, of 
Westleton. Whilst inspecting that gentleman’s collection in the sum- 
mer of 1864, I happened to mention the Scole woodpeckers with some 
expression of doubt as to the identity of those specimens, when he 
referred me to Mr. Francis Drake, of Billingford, as an individual 
most likely to be able to afford information. At once taking the hint, 
I shortly received the following obliging letter from Mr. Drake, who, 
to my great surprise, proved to be the very person who had shot the 
birds in question. 
“ Billingford, June 29, 1864. 
* Dear Sir,—In reply to yours, and being equally interested with 
yourself and Mr. Spalding in birds, I feel inclined to think the birds 
I shot many years since at Billingford, near Scole, were the large 
spotted woodpecker, although I was told at the time they were the 
black. 
“ Yours very truly, 
“FRANCIS DRAKE.” 
In 3 subsequent letter, in answer to further inquiries, Mr. Drake 
says, “It must have been more than thirty years since I shot the birds. 
They were evidently larger than the wryneck, with red heads. I was 
not aware they were in print, until I saw them mentioned in Mr, Lub- 
bock’s work on the ‘Fauna of Norfolk.’ They were not preserved. 
* The first edition of this work, in which the same statement occurs, was pub- 
lished in 1843 in a completed form, but had been issued in bi-monthly parts since 
1837, 
VOL. XXII. 3D 
