2438 - The Zoologist— January, 1871. 



for the number of quails that appeared in all parts of tlie kingdom. The 

 great number of these birds would alone constitute 1870 a year to be marked 

 off, and if worthy of no other name, it might be set down by sporting natu- 

 ralists as " the quail year. ' In a parish near to the writer, six; nests ^Yere 

 mown out in June in two contiguous fields, and a late straggler was picked 

 up in Bishop's Lydeard on the :30th of November. The end of the summer 

 and early autumn proved singularly rich in the occurrence of rare Tringae, 

 especially in the oft-favoured West. The pectoral sandpiper, the rare buff- 

 breasted sandpiper, and tlie true Schinz's sandpiper of America [Tringa 

 Buonapart'd of Yarrell), until then almost unknown to English ornithologists, 

 were all obtained on the coasts of Cornwall and Devon. Tlie severe gale of 

 mid-October drove a greater number of the gray phalarope to our shores 

 than had ever before been recorded. To all the birdstuffers of the West of 

 England the gray phalarope became a complete drug: one birdstuffer in 

 North Devon had to refuse to see any more after sixty specimens of this 

 beautiful little bird had been brought in. The year also furnished our 

 ornithologists fresh opportunities of studying the difficult group of the pipits 

 by the capture in Eugland of new (but perhaps hitherto overlooked) species. 

 It is also to be noted for the almost universal decision arrived at by our 

 ornithologists respecting Sabine's snipe. This abnormal bird is now 

 regarded as no more than a melanism of the common species.- We must 

 not forget to mention that the year commenced by producing another speci- 

 men of the Japanese thrush (White's thrush of Yarrell), thus seeming to 

 herald the other rarities of this memorable year. This bird, after escaping 

 great perils after it had been shot, luckily passed into the hands of 

 Mr. Cecil Smith, of Bishop's Lydeard, who prizes it as the gem of his large 

 collection.— (Eer.) M. A. Mathew ; Bishop's Lydeard Eectory, Dec. 2, 1870. 

 Binl-battiiii;. — In answer to the editorial query to my note on the gray 

 phalaropes in Somerset, in the December number of the ' Zoologist' (S. S. 

 2410), I ought perhaps, instead of the somewhat local term " bird-batting," 

 to have used the better-known and more Shakspeariau "bat-fowling": — 



" Gonzalo. You would lift the moon out of her sphere. 

 Sebastian. We would no, and then go hat-fowling." 



Tempest, Act ii. Scene 1. 



The facts of the case were as follows : — A man saw a gray phalarope 

 swimming in a pool of water near Taunton ; not knowing what it was he 

 ran off and borrowed a bird-batting net. On his return, he found the bird 

 still swimming about the pool, and succeeded in throwing the net over it 

 and capturing it before it rose from the water. — Cecil Smith ; Lydeard 

 House, Taunton. 



* There is a very interesting snipe in the Museum at Kxeler which supplies 

 a link between Seolopax Sabini and s. gallinngo. — M. A. M. 



