The Zoologist— March, 187U. 2057 



which had become knotted and inflamed, fully accounting for the 

 bird's unhealthy appearance. 



Hybrid Fowl and Pheasant. — A fine cross-bred bird, apparently 

 between a Dorking fowl and a pheasant, was shot near Cromer, on the 

 8th, and exhibited marked features of both parents : it proved a female 

 on dissection. 



Woodcock. — Very large bags have been made during the autumn 

 and winter, almost throughout the county, but chiefly in coverts 

 situated on the north-eastern part of our coast, in the neighbourhood 

 of Cromer and Holt. Near the latter spot, about the last week in 

 October, twenty -seven cocks were killed in one day, and from eight to 

 ten couples were reported in various localities, some being killed in 

 spots where they are rarely if ever seen. A Yarmouth correspondent 

 of ' Land and Water,' under dale of November 20th, writing of the 

 large numbers killed recently both in Norfolk and Suffolk, in planta- 

 tions near the sea, stated that twenty-two cocks were killed in one 

 covert alone, on the 5lh of November, and twelve in another, all in 

 good condition, but exhausted after their flight. The great day of the 

 season, however, was at Hempstead, near Holt, on the I6th, when four 

 guns killed forty-nine woodcocks, and on the previous day, on the 

 same ground, ten and a half couples were bagged and three and a half 

 couples picked up or shot by the keeper; and on the 20th, on an 

 adjoining estate at Bodham, the same party shot thirteen couples in 

 an hour and a half; and, again at Hempstead, on the 23rd, five and a 

 half couples : altogether, as I have since heard, six out of seven 

 woodcocks killed on the 1st of February, 1870, completed the large 

 number of three hundred woodcocks bagged by the Messrs. Buxton 

 on their manors in this part of the county. A resident at Hempstead, 

 well acquainted with these coverts, which have always been noted for 

 woodcocks, believes that if they had been looked about ten days 

 before at least one hundred cocks might have been killed in one da_v, 

 by sportsmen accustomed to walk and shoot in the " high fell." He 

 had never before seen so many, and of an evening, on the adjoining 

 heath, twelve and fourteen were observed on the wing at one time. 

 A curious and very unusual variety, killed at Runlon, near Cromer, 

 was announced in the 'Field' of the 13th of November, as a "black 

 woodcock," but from Dr. Sclater, Professor Newton and others, who 

 examined it, when exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological Society, 

 I leavn that it was considered as an example of incipient melanism, 

 and had been following the fashion of the so-called Sabine's snipe. 



SECOND SERIES — A'OL. V. P 



