5078 THE ZoOLOGIST—SEPTEMBER, 1876. 
taken the head, which, however, he was good enough to show me, and let 
me measure, but refused ten shillings for, as he “ wanted to make a saw of 
it!” another had the back fin, a third the tail; the latter part, however, 
was presented to the lady below whose house the dolphin was washed 
ashore, and who, hearing that it was a rare species, most kindly presented 
it to me, upon which I sent it, with a characteristic piece of the skin, 
showing the various colours, up to my friend Mr. A. G. More, of the Royal 
Dublin Society's Museum. According to the last edition of Bell’s ‘ British 
Quadrupeds’ (p. 470), this species seems to have occurred nowhere on the 
British coast, except among the Orkney Islands, and it is undoubtedly the 
first time that it has been obtained on the Irish coast. There was a cut 
about two inches long oun its side, immediately under the back fin, probably 
made by a harpoon. The arrangement of colours, the tail, and especially the 
head, differ very much from the engraving in Bell’s ‘ British Quadrupeds,’ 
which does not show the projecting snout; but my specimen certainly had 
the nose almost as marked as in the figure in “ Bell” of D. tursio, while 
the tail in his figure is out of all proportion small; it is also to be noticed 
that the colours are somewhat differently arranged; nor does Bell mention 
a light blue stripe running along the side below the white mark, which was 
very conspicuous in my specimen. I have still some hope of obtaining the 
skull and perhaps some of the vertebre, and shall let you know if I should 
obtain any further information. —J. Douglas-Oygilby ; Portrush, July 20, 
1876. 
Ornithological Notes from Blakenny.—I shot some sanderlings on the 
12th of August at Blakenny, in Norfolk, and found them, to my surprise, 
to be old birds. Probably the young ones, which have far to come from the 
place where they were hatched, had not yet arrived, and these old ones had 
most likely not been so far. To take another species, the dunlin: this bird 
breeds in Scotland and in some parts of England, and in the beginning of 
August there are more young dunlins than old ones at Blakenny. At that 
time the turnstones are only just commencing to come. On the 12th I only 
shot one, where later in the season I have sometimes shot six or seven ina 
day, but that was an adult in most perfect summer plumage. I cannot help 
alluding with satisfaction to the marked increase of the terns. It is 
generally believed that it is illegal to take their eggs, to which circumstance 
their increase is in part owing. At the furthest point of the north side of 
the harbour I saw such a drove as would never have been seen eight years 
ago: it consisted of about two-thirds lesser terns and one-third common 
terns, with a few black terns and I believe also a few arctic terns; there 
could not have been less than two hundred and fifty of them. Near them 
were a few blackheaded gulls. The young of this species of gull is very 
common at Blakenny at this time, much more so than any other kind of 
