The Zoologist— October, 18G8. 1423 



medium for settling this question ? I should be glad if any one would give names of 

 places wherever the bird has been met with, not only in this country, but elsewhere.— 

 W. Watson. 



[Perhaps the following extract from page 318 of my edition of Montagu's 

 Dictionary may be of some use to my correspondent:— "This bird was described by 

 the late Mr. Vigors, at p. 556 of the fourteenth volume of the ' Transactions of the 

 Linnean Society,' from a specimen killed in Queen's County, Ireland, in August, 1822. 

 A second specimen, as recorded by Mr. Selby, was shot on the banks of the Medway, 

 near Rochester, in October, 1824 ; a third at Morpeth, in Northumberland, as also 

 recorded by Mr. Selby, but without date; and Mr. Thompson, in his ' Natural History 

 of Ireland,' gives full particulars of a fourth, killed in December, 1827, about a mile 

 from Garvagh, in the County Londonderry. In the 'Zoologist' for 1845 Mr. Knox 

 records, at p. 1025, the occurrence of a fifth specimen, shot early in May of that year, 

 near one of the estuaries of Chichester Harbour : in the volume for 1846 Mr. Sclater, 

 the active Secretary of the Zoological Society, mentions, at p. 1300, a sixth killed on 

 Basing Moor, in Hampshire: in the volume for 1857 Mr. Stevenson notices, at 

 p. 5427, the occurrence of a seventh at Rainham, near Fakenham, in Norfolk, on the 

 17th of October, 1856: and finally, in the volume for 1862, Mr. Rodd records, at 

 p. 7882, the occurrence of an eighth example at Carnauton, near Penzance, in 1861. 

 After reading, with the care which such valuable remarks deserve, the opinions of 

 Mr. Salvin (Zool. 5593) and Mr. Rodd (Zool. 7938), I incline to the opinion suggested, 

 but not enforced, by those accomplished ornithologists, that Sabine's snipe is nothing 

 more than a variety of the common snipe. It seems to me a remarkably apt illustration 

 of that deviation from normal colouring which so frequently occurs in nature, not only 

 among birds, but in every department of the animal kingdom." — Edward Newman.'] 



Occurrence of the Common Dotterel at the Lizard. — The common dotterel seldom 

 makes its appearance in Cornwall : we find them sometimes on our open moors near 

 the sea, and generally in the autumn. I observed two in the birdstuffer's hands, which 

 came from the Lizard district near Helston. — Edward Hearle Rodd; Penzance, 

 September 16, 1868. 



Glossy Ibis in Norfolk.— I have received this day, for preservation, a beautiful 

 immature male specimen of the glossy ibis, in the flesh, from Stalham (but cannot at 

 present say whether shot in that particular locality). The bird was rather fat, and 

 weighed one pound six ounces, being four ounces more than Morris, in his ' British 

 Bird*,' allows for the average weight of adult birds, and six ounces above the average 

 of immature birds.— ? 1 . E. Gunn ; 21, Regent Street, Norwich, September 14, 1868. 



Divers on Land.— I have stated (Zool. S. S. 1379) that divers never come to land 

 except in the breeding season: this in its natural sense is true, but, unnaturally, some- 

 times a poor diver will find himself in a midland county in England or thrown upon a 

 beach. The most probable supposition to account for the former predicament is that 

 storm had compelled the bird to seek inland water for its subsistence, or that it was 

 crossing the island from a stormy sea to seek quieter water under the lee of the land : 

 in either case we must suppose that either fatigue, error or accident caused it to alight, 

 as it certainly would not wittingly alight on land, from which it could never rise. In 

 the case of its being thrown ashore, fatigue, sickness, or its inadvertently diving within 

 the power of a roller, will account: it certainly never goes ashore willingly, except, as 

 I said, the female to lay and incubate. Those pictures we see of divers perched on 



