OCOASIONAL NOTES. 19 
irides bright crimson lake; beak light green, yellowish at the base; it had 
no naked patch or shield on the forehead (possibly from its immature age) ; 
head and neck, gray; back, light olive-green; tail and tail-coverts, black ; 
breast, bright chestnut-brown ; wings, bright brown, especially the quills, 
which had almost a crimson tinge to them; wings, underneath, barred with 
black and rufous-brown (one of these feathers was enclosed); thighs, gray ; 
vent, &c., black.” Being utterly at a loss to name the bird in question, 
and feeling very certain that it was no European species, I sent Mr. 
Morres’ note and the single feather to my friend Professor Newton; and 
here I beg to hail, as a triumph of practical Ornithology, the fact that no 
sooner did Mr. Salvin, who examined it with Professor Newton, see the 
feather and hear the description, than he at once pronounced the bird in 
question to be the American species, known as Aramides Cayennensis; a 
judgment which the two able ornithologists above named immediately 
verified by comparison with other specimens in the Swainson collection at 
Cambridge. Professor Newton adds that ‘as its name implies, the bird is 
an inhabitant of Cayenne and adjoining parts, occurring in Trinidad, but 
nowhere nearer (he thinks) to this country. It has been brought over 
- several times to the Zoological Gardens, but it is most improbable that it 
should find its way to England unassisted; though, supposing it had made 
good its escape from confinement, it might perhaps continue to exist for 
some weeks, or even months, here, except in winter. Aramides is a rather 
aberrant genus of Rails, found only in the New World.” Doubtless Mr. 
Morres and I should have been better pleased if we could have honestly 
considered onr Wiltshire visitor as ‘veritable British,” but after this 
decided opinion of Professor Newton we shall scarcely be disposed to 
regard the stranger as a voluntary visitor, or as one of the numerous 
stragglers driven over by adverse winds; we must rather look upon it as an 
escaped prisoner, perhaps one which has freed itself from captivity for some 
time, and has been wandering on and skulking from observation, after the 
manner of other two-legged creatures when they have managed to get out- 
side the prison bars. I am bound, however, to say that Mr. Morres, who 
has made enquiry in the neighbourhood, can hear of no such escape, and 
says there are no marks of captivity about the bird. I may also remark that 
it is so far a cosmopolite as to have bred in the Jardin d’Acclimatation at 
Paris (‘Ibis,’ 3rd Series, vol. i., p. 485), and IT may remind Professor 
Newton that in the second series of the ‘ Ibis,’ of which he was the talented 
editor (vol. iv., p. 486), he speaks of this very species as “the wide ranging 
Aramides Cayannensis.”—Aurrep C. Smrra (Yatesbury Rectory, Calne). 
GreeneincH Nestine in Furze (Zool. 2nd ser. 5120).—In the summer 
of 1875 I found several nests of the Greenfinch in some tall furze bushes 
situated outside the wall of a kitchen garden, and one nest—containing 
was almost entirely constructed of the silky catkins of 
four young ones 
