OCCASIONAL NOTES. 339 
high on the legs—namely, about fourteen inches—and is a very formidable 
looking animal, with powerful jaws. The distribution of colours is very 
similar to those of the Inverness specimen described in ‘ The Zoologist’ (2nd 
_ ser. p. 4791), but this cat is darker, and seemingly more aged. How it 
could have escaped for so many years is oon —Henry HapDrieLD 
(Ventnor, Isle of Wight). 
[We are extremely sceptical in regard to the alleged existence of Wild 
Cats in the South of England at the present day, and, notwithstanding the 
colour and large size of many of the animals killed, we cannot help regarding 
them as of hearth-rug ancestry. We should like to know what our readers 
in the New Forest have to say on the subject.—Eb. | 
Purrie GALLINULE IN SoMERSETSHIRE.— On visiting the British 
Museum, a few days since, I carefully looked at the different species of 
Porphyrio in the National Collection, the result being that I satisfied 
myself that my Irish example is not the small Porphyrio Martiniquii, but 
the South European P. veterum. I have read Mr. Smith’s remarks on the 
specimen of this Porphyrio obtained in Somersetshire, and as he objects to 
regard it as a straggler to this country, he is bound to bear the onus 
probandi, and to bring forward something more than a mere surmise that it 
is only a bird that has escaped from confinement. Unless, as I have 
already remarked, there is something altogether exceptional in the bird 
which is met with at large, it is, in the absence of proof to the contrary, 
fairly entitled to be ranked as a voluntary straggler to this country. The 
facilities of importation which exist at the present time, which are rendering 
this country what Pericles claimed Athens to be, the emporium of the whole 
world, and that, so far as concerns living specimens of foreign animals as 
well as the ordinary spoils of merchandize, must not be stretched too far to 
account for every unusual bird found wild in our woods and fields. To do this 
is greatly to destroy the romance of British Ornithology. The attitude of 
the ornithologist in this country should be one of general expectation. From 
the situation of this island, it offers a natural resting-place to birds which 
may have lost their reckoning in their migrations both from the Old and 
the New World. To ee then, of any new-comer to the British list 
that ‘it is only an escape” is to cast a damper upon this expectant feeling, 
and to abandon the peculiar fortune with which the position of this country 
has enriched its naturalists. It is for this reason, chiefly, that I decline to 
retire from my defence of the Somersetshire Purple Gallinule, and to ask 
Mr. Smith to furnish proofs that the specimen in question escaped from an 
aviary. Does he know of any one who, residing not far from the locality of 
its capture, happened about that time to lose so rare a bird? Even if he 
did, I might enquire for certain marks of confinement which all birds, 
however handsomely treated in the aviary, are almost sure to exhibit; dull, 
soiled, or abraded plumage; less brilliancy in the coloration of the softer 
