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THIRD SERIES. 
Vou. IX.] MAY, 1885. [No. 101. 
NOTES ON THE VERTEBRATE ANIMALS OF 
LEICESTERSHIRE. 
By Montacu Brownz, F. Z.S. 
Curator, Town Museum, Leicester. 
Up to the present time, so far as I am aware, no complete 
account of the vertebrate animals of this county has been 
attempted, although scattered notes have appeared in various 
Natural History journals, and a few lists—more or less imperfect 
—have been from time to time published. Thus in 1840 Mac- 
gillivray, in his ‘British Birds,’ printed a “ Catalogue of the Land 
Birds of the County of Leicester, by Mr. Jas. Harley.” In 1842 
Potter published, in his ‘History of the Antiquities of Charnwood 
Forest,’ an ‘“‘ Appendix on the Ornithology of Charnwood Forest, 
by Churchill Babington, Esq.,” .in which some few mistakes 
occurred, but which was nevertheless noteworthy as chronicling 
for the third time in Great Britain the occurrence of Cursorius 
isabellinus. It is probable that this list was written, if not pub- 
lished, previously to that of Harley. Nothing further, I believe, 
was published for many years, until my friend Mr. Thomas 
Macaulay, M.R.C.S.L., contributed to ‘The Midland Naturalist? 
for 1881-2 “A List of the Birds of Leicestershire,” to which 
I added a few notes. This list was, all things considered, the 
most complete then published, although deficient perhaps in not 
noting the nesting-habits of the rarer species, and in introducing 
certain rare British birds on the mere ypse dixit of observers 
little competent to discriminate closely-allied species. Since 
ZOOLOGIST.—mMay, 1885. re) 
