296 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



indication of the protuberance ; it is nothing more than an indica- 

 tion, but still one can well imagine that when the bird was alive 

 it may have been as large as that in Mr. Booth's specimen. 



On the 4th of June, near Cromer, a bird was seen by 

 Mr. I. W. Cremer, which I have no doubt was a Night Heron. 

 The last shot in Norfolk was at Ranworth on July 21st, 1880, — 

 a young bird, indeed apparently but a few months old, — and 

 has not been recorded. The bird seen by Mr. Cremer settled on 

 a pond about a quarter of a mile from the sea, and, though twice 

 shot at, escaped. 



Mr. W. Eagle Clarke's remarks on the tail of the Tengmalm's 

 Owl shot at Whitby {ante, p. 177) led me to examine the tail of 

 one which I got at Cromer Lighthouse on the 30th October last, 

 as recorded by Mr. Stevenson (ante, p. 115), and I find that, as in 

 the bird obtained at Whitby, there are five, and not four, pretty 

 distinct bars formed by the spots on the tail. I cannot say that 

 my bird agrees very well with the plate in Dresser's ' Birds of 

 Europe,' taken from an adult male from Sweden, and in which, 

 besides minor differences, the bird is drawn with ears, or rather 

 horns, of which I see no signs. 



Mr. Clarke, in another part of his interesting paper, mentions 

 that the name "Rock Goose" is applied in Yorkshire to the 

 Brent. I have never heard it called anything but " Brant Goose" 

 at Blakeney, and that has been the Norfolk name for it since 

 the days of the L 'Estranges, according to whose ' Household 

 Accounts,' extending from 1519 to 1578, the value of a " Brante" 

 was twopence. But I have many times heard it called " Road 

 Goose" at the mouth of the Tees, in Yorkshire, a name which, 

 meaning perhaps nothing more than that these birds frequent 

 harbours and roadsteads more than the Grey Geese, has been 

 persistent in that particular locality since the time of Willughby 

 (' Ornithology,' Book iii., p. 301). Mr. Dresser says that in 

 Holland the Brent is called " Rotgans." 



[It is curious that neither Willughby nor Pennant, to say nothing of 

 later naturalists, have hit upon the origin of the old northern name of this 

 bird, Rotgans, Radgaas (of which " Road-goose" is doubtless a corruption), 

 signifying " Root-goose," its chief food being the root and lower portion of the 

 stem of aquatic plants. The word occurs in the Durham Household Book, 

 untter date 3*id Feb. 1534 :-" Item, 3 Februarii.. ] Rutgoys, 3d."— Ed.] 



