196 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
NOTES ON THE VERTEBRATE ANIMALS OF 
LEICESTERSHIRE. 
By Monracu Browne, F.Z.S. 
Curator, Town Museum, Leicester. 
(Continued from p. 167). 
Order StrEaanopopes.—F'amily PELEcANIDm. 
Phalacrocorax carbo (Linn.). Cormorant.—Has once occurred 
in the county. Mr. J. Potter, station-master of East Langton, 
the owner of the specimen, an immature bird, writes me that it 
was caught alive in a grass-field near Langton Hall on Sept. 6th, 
1883, after a strong gale the previous day from the 8.W. 
Sula bassana:(Linn.). Gannet.—An accidental visitant. A 
young male of the year was picked up in a dying condition 
on the borders of Buddon Wood, near Quorndon. Potter refers 
to it as in the possession of Miss Watkinson, of Woodhouse. 
Another immature bird of this species, which had been wounded, 
was picked up half dead at Shangton in 1878 (Mid. Nat. 1882, 
p. 79). A third, also a young bird, shot between Bottesford 
and Scarrington, near the River Smite, is in the possession of 
Mr. H. V. Flower, of Scarrington, and I have heard of others 
having been killed at Somerby and Houghton-on-the-Hill, the 
last in September, 1869. 
Order Heropiones.—F amily ARDEIDE. 
Ardea cinerea, Linn. Heron.—Resident, generally distributed, 
and ‘breeding in a few localities, as at Stapleford, the seat of 
Lord Harborough, and formerly at Mere Hill Wood, by Cotes, two 
miles south of Loughborough, and in Martenshaw Wood, where, 
in the spring of 1840, the birds were shot down and destroyed.” 
A “white Heron” is stated by Harley to have been shot some 
years ago at Groby Pool. He describes it as purely white, with 
black legs and a yellow bill, having also an elongated occipital 
crest like that of the grey species, of which he considered it 
an albino. In this opinion, it appears, he was confirmed by 
Macgillivray. It appears to me that, disregarding the colour of 
the bill, it might have been—if not Ardea alba—a specimen of 
A.garzetta. Nothing is said as to size, and so the matter is veiled 
