NOTES AND QUERIES. 183 
[Ingatestone, Essex] by my grandfather's gardener. My grandfather had 
it stuffed.” Of the four eggs two are now in my possession, one was given 
to Mr. W. Colchester, of Grundisburg Hall, Suffolk, and the other to 
Mr. Harvie Brown, of Dunipace House, Stirlingshire, Sept. 18th, 1867.— 
Witt14m Jesse, Jun. (Selwyn College, Cambridge). 
Nesting of the Black Redstart in Durham.—In Mr. Christy’s note 
(p. 151) on the reported nesting of this bird in Essex, he seems to be under 
the impression that Ruticilla tithys has never been known to breed in this 
country. Allow me to refer him to Mr. Hancock’s ‘ Catalogue of the Birds 
of Northumberland and Durham’ (p. 68), where it is stated that, in the year 
1845, a pair of Blackstarts nested in the garden of the Rev. James Raine 
Crook Hall, in this city. The nest and some of the eggs were secured by 
the late Mr. Wm. Proctor, Sub-curator University Museum. I feel quite 
certain that Mr. Proctor would duly identify the birds before removing the 
nest and eggs, “as was his usual strict habit.” Some time after, the nest 
and one egg were given to Mr. Hancock by the son of the rev. gentleman 
in whose garden the nest was found. They are to be seen in the Newcastle- 
on-Tyne Museum at present.—JamxEs Sutton (33, Western Hill, Durham). 
[See also Sterland, ‘ Birds of Sherwood Forest,’ pp. 67, 68.—Ep.] 
Woodcocks.—You ask how I came to know that Chantrey’s Wood- 
cocks did not weigh over 16 oz. apiece, as no mention is made of their weight 
in the Holkham Game-book. Perhaps you will allow a third party to be 
judge between us. My friend, whose authority I think no sportsman would 
be disposed to question, writes thus to me on this subject :—‘‘ The day on 
which Chantrey shot those two Woodcocks was the 20th November, 1829, 
as recorded in the Holkham Game-book, with this note:—‘ Amidst the 
events of this day it is especially worthy of being recorded that Mr. Chantrey 
killed at one shot two Woodcocks’—testified by T. W. Coke, Archdeacon 
Glover, J. Spencer Stanhope. Not one word is said about the weight of 
the Woodcocks, which, if they had scaled 1 tb. each, would surely have been 
mentioned as a most unusual weight. I have killed, in Lower Brittany and - 
Devonshire, a great number of Woodcocks,—my ten or twelve a-day for 
years, shooting three or four days a-week,—and weighed the big ones, but 
never, to my recollection, killed one over 140z.” Bewick says they generally 
weigh about 12 oz.; Yarrell that they vary from 7 to 14 or 15 oz., but 
records some heavier exceptions; and in Daniel’s ‘ Rural Sports,’ one is 
recorded as weighing 17 oz. Gould records that the weight of seventy out 
of eighty birds in fair condition will range between 11 and 14 oz., and that 
it is a very large cock that weighs 15 oz., and an extraordinary one that 
turns the scale at 16 0z. “It is my conviction,” says my correspondent, 
“that not one in 500 weighs lib. What proof then can there be,” he 
continues to say, “ that Chantrey’s Woodcocks weighed 1 tb. each? I think 
