NOTES AND QUERIES. 27 
inches ; culmen, a little over 1:1 inch; wing, from carpus to tip, 10°25 
inches; tail, 8°75 inches; tarsus, 2°50 inches; middle toe, 2°25 inches 
(excluding nail). Sex (by dissection), young male. The crop contained 
—amongst other ordinary food—acorns. The legs and toes resemble those 
of a Pheasant in colour, shape and size, and are feathered in nearly the 
same manner, the feathers ending just below the tibio-tarsal joint, and not 
continuing on the front of the tarso-metatarsus to the toes, as in the 
Grouse. Broadly speaking, this handsome bird may be described as being 
most like a Black Grouse in the head, neck, and breast, and like a Phea- 
sant or Game-fowl in the wings, tail and legs. The weight and dimensions 
are beyond those of an ordinary Black Grouse, and especially is this 
observable in the breadth of the wings and the length of the neck (this 
was remarked on by Major Knight when the bird was first shot). The 
figure on page 311 of Yarrell’s ‘ British Birds’ (Ist edition), that of a 
hybrid killed in 1839, by Lord Howick, near Felton, in Northumberland, 
might, curiously enough, be an exact representation of the present 
Specimen; and the colour of another specimen mentioned on page 310 
describes it almost accurately. I am disposed to think that the male 
parent was a Pheasant, possibly a ring-necked one, from the fact of four or 
five small white feathers appearing on the neck of the hybrid.—Monracu 
Brown (Curator, Town Museum, Leicester). 
Wryneck nesting in a Sand Martin’s Burrow.—About the end of 
June last Mr. L. W. Bartlett visited a colony of Sand Martins which have 
their burrows in the side of a small sand-pit on Tadmarton Heath. As he 
was about to put his hand into one of the holes a brown bird flew out very 
quickly and entered some bushes near at hand. At the end of the burrow 
he found seven pure white eggs in a very slight nest of dry grass (probably 
an old Martin’s), and considerably incubated. He showed me some of the 
eggs a few days afterwards, and I told him I thought they were Wryneck’s, 
but, as the position of the nest was curious, I asked him to let me submit 
one of them to a competent authority. I therefore herewith enclose it for 
your inspection. Mr. Bartlett was unable to get another sight of the bird 
although he watched for a considerable time.—OLiveR V. APLIN (Great 
Bourton, Oxon). 
[In size and shape the egg sent certainly resembles that of a Wry- 
neck.—Ep. | 
The Birds of the Burlings.— With reference to Major Feilden’s 
note on the Burlings (p. 470), I may state that I have before me an 
extract from the ‘Boletim’ of the Geographical Society of Lisbon (4th series, 
No. 9, pp. 409-452), giving an account of a botanical excursion to these 
islands in May, 1883, by M. J. Daveau, to which is appended a zoological 
notice of the group by M. Albert A. Girard, assistant in the Zoological 
