64 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



to be a favourite resort of the species when it visits us, as so 

 many have been obtained there from time to time. 



On October 2nd, wind north and very cold, flocks of Skylarks 

 were seen crossing the Sound, flying N.W. Examined an adult 

 Gannet, Arctic Tern, and young Storm Petrel {Procellaria 

 2}elagica) at the Stonehouse birdstuffer's, all obtained in the 

 neighbourhood. The Petrel had been caught and brought into 

 the house alive by a cat, from the garden of the late Mr. Charles 

 Trelawny, situate in the centre of Plymouth, after a severe gale 

 from the north. It was a very young specimen, still showing 

 some of the nestling down, especially on the abdomen and under 

 tail-coverts ; the greater wing-coverts, too, were prettily tipped 

 with white, forming a conspicuous bar across the wing. 



On the loth October I visited Looe and Polperro, and was 

 shown the house in which the late Mr. Jonathan Couch lived, 

 and the room in which he died, now converted into a Reading 

 Room and small Library, called " The Couch Reading Room," 

 in memoriam. When passing by tlie St. Germans mud-flats, in 

 the train, I remarked a vast number of Curlews ; a flock consisting 

 of fully two hundred rose together at the report of a fowling-piece 

 discharged from a boat on the river. I bought in the Plymouth 

 market another young male hybrid between Pheasant and Black- 

 cock, similar to the one described by me (Zool. 1879, p. 60). 

 The skin is now in the fine collection of varieties and hybrids 

 belonging to my friend Mr. Frederick Bond, of Fairfield Avenue, 

 Staines. 



A nice specimen of the Cornish Chough examined by me had 

 been sent up from Padstow ; in its stomach I found only the 

 mandibles of beetles. Some Common Terns were forwarded for 

 preservation from Starcross, on the coast of Devon, but I saw 

 none near Plymouth during the past autumn. 



A friend told me that, when cruising in his yacht off" Plymouth 

 Sound, he noticed a tremendous struggle in the water between a 

 Cormorant and large eel, which had twisted itself so tightly round 

 the bird's neck as to almost cause sufi"ocation, but before getting 

 his boat quite close enough, as he thought, to pick up the 

 exhausted bird, it just managed, with some extra exertion, to 

 swallow its prey and make good its escape. 



Scaup ducks were rather plentiful during October. There 

 were four young birds of this species at a poulterer's shop in 



