NOTES AND QUERIES. 233 



caverns ; that in days gone by the islands rose far higher, with cavern piled 

 on cavern, and that the work of disintegration by solution and wave-action 

 is slowly going on, pulling down these marble monuments of a giant age. 

 Indeed, here and there a fall of blocks has occurred lately, and as there is 

 no shoal off the base of the slip, the destructive action is probably rapid. 

 A small oyster covers the rocks at the water-line. A handsome Kingfisher 

 was secured and sent to the British Museum. A few Doves and an 

 Eagle or two were the only other birds seen, besides a small bat in the 

 caves. By the position of the nest-seekers' ropes, the Swallows appear 

 to breed only on the roofs of the caves. The islands appeared to be 

 entirely composed of a blue-tinted marble. A vessel could lie alongside 

 them and lower the cut blocks straight into her hold, but it is probably of 

 too poor a quality to be worth shipment. — Alfred Carpenter (Commander 

 R.N., Hydrographer to the Admiralty), in 'Nature.' 



On the re-appearance of Pallas's Sand Grouse in the British 

 Islands.— Amongst the ornithological events of 1803, the most remarkable 

 was the migration from Taitary and Mongolia into Western Europe of 

 large flocks of Pallas's Sand Grouse (Syrrhaptex paradoxus), numbers of 

 which were met with and shot in that year in various parts of the British 

 Islands, but chiefly in the eastern counties of England (cf. Newton in 

 * The Ibis,' 1864, pp. 185 — 222). It would seem as if the present year 

 were to be signalised by a similar invasion of this very singular bird. For 

 a month past I have been prepared to hear of its arrival in England, for 

 several letters have reached me announcing its arrival in Poland and 

 Prussia. Herr Taczanowski, writing from the Museum at Warsaw on 

 April 20th, reported his having received, on April 2-lth, a female specimen 

 which had been shot out of a flock, three days previously, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Plock, in Poland. On the 25th he received alive a male with 

 a broken wing, which had been procured out of a flock of more than 200 

 on the banks of the River Pilica; another was received by him from 

 Kouskie, south of Radom ; and a pair was purchased about the same time in 

 the Warsaw Market. Dr. Rey, of Leipzig, writing on April 28th to 

 Prof. R. Blasius, of Brunswick, who kindly communicated the information, 

 reported his having received two specimens, which had struck against the 

 telegraph wires at Paunsdorf, fifteen miles east of Leipzig; and Dr. A. B. 

 Meyer, of Dresden, in a letter addressed to the editor of 'Nature,' pub- 

 lished on I\Jay 17th, gave a list of localities and dates at which examples 

 of this bird had been recently met with on the Continent, commencing 

 with those already announced by M. Taczanowski as obtained on April 21st, 

 and ending with a specimen procured near Leipzig on May 7th. Since 

 the last-mentioned date, Herr Moschler has reported one picked up dead 

 under telegraph-wires at Bautzen, and I have received intelligence of the 



ZOOLOGIST. — JUNE, 1888. T 



