CCASIONAL NOTES. 29 
I learnt that a nest of Sparrowhawks had been reared in a fir wood near, 
and that the pair of old birds had been seen about the locality all the 
summer. ‘Those I saw were undoubtedly the inhabitants of this nest; but 
the question arises, could they all have been of one family? and even 
provided two were the parents, is it not very unusual for this species to lay 
so many as seven eggs? or is it possible that the young of two nests were 
thus congregating? If so, it seemed to me that they were unnaturally 
social, for I had never before seen more than a pair of these birds together 
on the wing.— G. B. Corsin (Ringwood, Hants). 
WHITE-FRONTED GoosE.—On the 20th October Mr. Collins Splatt, of 
Plymouth, presented me with a White-fronted Goose, Anser albifrons, which 
had been killed a few days before on a down near Colstock, and was said to 
have associated with some tame geese. It was, without exception, the 
finest in plumage I ever saw, the bands on the breast and belly being so _ 
broad and close together as to make the under parts appear almost wholly 
black. On examination I found the stomach full of the common Dutch 
clover, Trifoliwm repens, mixed apparently with a dark kind of gravel. 
Several geese of the same species were afterwards exposed for sale in our 
markets, all of which .were said to have been killed in Cornwall.—_Joun 
GatcomBE (Stonehouse, Plymouth). 
ALBINO SPECIMENS OF THE Common Snipe anD Wrynecx.—In the 
spring of the present year an albino specimen of the Common Snipe was 
killed at the Wilstone Reservoir, near Tring, by one of the keepers of 
Baron Lionel de Rothschild, and is now in his possession. A few days ago 
(October 23rd) a pure white Wryneck, a young bird of the year, was brought 
to me. It had been killed a few weeks previously in the grounds of 
Mr. R. 8S. Colet, of Wendover Hall. It is now in the collection of Sir John 
Harpur Crewe, of Calke Abbey, near Derby —H. Harpur Crewe (The 
Rectory, Drayton-Beauchamp). 
PourpLe GALLINULE In Norrotx.—Another specimen of the green-backed 
species was shot in Norfolk on the 1st November, and there is no reason 
for thinking it had escaped from captivity. I had a letter on the 5th of 
that month from the owner, in which he said that it was shot at Stalham, 
which is only a few miles from Hickling, where the last recorded specimen 
was obtained. It is in just the same plumage as the other, I hear, and a 
male bird.—J. H. Gurney, Jun. (Northrepps, Norwich). 
Meruixs Nusrina in A Treu.—At a recent meeting of the Natural 
History Society of Glasgow, Mr. James Lumsden exhibited a pair of 
Merlins, Falco esalon (male and female), which had been shot from the 
nest in a tree on the banks of Loch Lomond, in July last. Mr. Lumsden 
stated that he exhibited these birds in order that the somewhat unusual 
