4720 Tue ZooLocist—DeEcEMBER, 1875. 
A Monstrosity—Mr. Smith, taxidermist, of Newport, has lately had a 
monstrosity to stuff—* A lamb with two heads and four ears, two tails and 
eight legs ; everything perfect (?) excepting one face, which had but one eye, 
and that in the centre of the forehead."—H. Hadfield ; November 8, 1875. 
Rare Birds in North Devon.— The beginning of September an osprey 
was shot on the banks of the Taw, and another was seen about the same 
date. Towards the end of October a fine example of the American bittern 
was killed by Mr. Richards while shooting on some high moor ground near 
Parracombe: I have seen this bird, which I believe is to be presented to 
Earl Fortescue, as it was shot upon his lordship’s ground: it is a young bird 
of the year. A very fine specimen of the roughlegged buzzard was recently 
shot on Exmoor by one of the keepers of Mr. F. Knight, M.P.: it is a very 
light-coloured bird. The roughlegged buzzard is a very rare visitor so far 
west as Devon and Somerset. Added to these rare captures I have to record 
the occurrence of a rosecoloured pastor, which was obtained in the neigh- 
bourhood of Bideford the latter end of October. In North Devon, as in most 
parts of the kingdom, there is a great extent of flooded land, owing to the 
continucus heavy rains of the present autumn, and this seems to afford a rare 
feeding-ground to many kinds of gull. The drowned worms must afford 
them a rich banquet. In a flooded meadow near Bideford I noticed a single 
large tern as late as the 11th of November, in company with numerous 
kittiwakes and brownheaded gulls, and saw another tern two days later 
beating along the Torridge.— Murray A. Mathew; Bishop's Lydeard, 
November 14, 1875. 
The Value of Natural-History Specimens.—The relative value which natu- 
ralists of the last generation put on certain birds seems absurd enough to us 
in the present advanced state of Science. I see from a copy of Mr. Bullock's 
sale catalogue, in the possession of Prof. Newton, annotated in MS. by 
Mr. George Caley, that the snowy owl obtained in Shetland by Dr. Ed- 
mondston, and by him sent to Mr. Bullock, fetched the extraordinary sum 
of £26 5s., while a great auk’s egg (lot 123), on the twenty-first day of the 
sale, went for twelve shillings. Dr. Leach bought both, but this large sale 
seems to have attracted a great many naturalists, both English and foreign. 
It was held at the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, in the spring of 1819.— 
J. H. Gurney, jun.; Northrepps Hall, Norwich. 
Bird’s Nest in the Fleece of a living Sheep.—The following is an extract 
from the Plymouth journal, the ‘ Patriot,’ of June 27th, 1832, copied from 
J.D. Salmon’s diary, which is in the Norwich Museum :—* Friday, as four 
men were sheep-shearing at Radford, they discovered a bird’s nest com- 
pletely embedded in the wool on the back of one of the sheep. Not the least 
doubt is entertained of its, having been built there; and what is still more 
