1248 The Zoologist— June, 1868. 



veritable Picus martius. Improbable as it may appear to sceptical 

 ornithologists, I feel further justified in including this species in the 

 present Catalogue from my own personal observation. In March, 

 1807, while walking under some elms in Ditton Park, I saw a great 

 black woodpecker busily engaged on one of the tallest trees within a 

 short distance of me. I was sufficiently near to identify the bird with 

 certainty, and had an opportunity of observing its movements for the 

 space of half a minute, when it flew off with au undulating flight to a 

 considerable distance, and was seen no more." — p. 178. 



Black Swan. — "A few centuries ago the black swan was not sup- 

 posed to exist, and doubtless many remember the old line — 



' Rara avis in terrisj nigroque similima cygno.' 



Of late years, however, some half-dozen of these birds have been pro- 

 cured on our coasts, and I saw, a short while ago, a young one which 

 had been killed in Suffolk. About the year 1852 a man who lives 

 out in the woods all clay, and usually sleeps under a barn or hay-stack 

 at night, saw a large dark-coloured bird, which he supposed was a 

 swan, flying high up in the air over some trees near the little village 

 of Burnham. He told Mr. Gerding's gamekeeper this piece of news, 

 and the two went together to try to get a shot at this curious bird, 

 which they eventually did, and the bird — a veritable black swan — fell 

 to the gun of the keeper. What became of this rare bird I was unable 

 to ascertain, but I believe the skin was never preserved, and that, after 

 being admired as a ' curiosity,' it was recklessly thrown away." — 

 p. 204. 



Mandarin Duck. — " This rare duck has never occurred in a wild 

 slate, so far as I am aware, in this country, but I am here enabled to 

 include it as a rare and occasional straggler. Mr. Sharpe tells me 

 that a very fine adult male mandarin duck, in splendid plumage, was 

 shot by Mr. Briggs, near Cookham, in the month of May, I860. It 

 might have been, and doubtless was, an escaped specimen, but it 

 was exceeding wild, and gave Briggs a chase which lasted nearly a 

 whole day before he managed to shoot it. It is now preserved in 

 Mrs. de Vitre's collection, at Formosa." — p. 208. 



Great Auk. — "The following extract referring to the appearance of 

 the great auk in Buckinghamshire must be accepted cum grano salts. 

 It is copied verbatim from the third volume of Yarrell's 'British 

 Birds,' but it is solely in deference to the high authority of that 

 naturalist that it is reprinted in the present work : — ' Mr. Bullock told 



