$84 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
‘Memoranda touching the Natural History of Yarmouth and its environs,’ 
by Sir William Jackson Hooker, Thomas Penrice, Esq., Mr. Lilly Wigg, 
Rev. Joseph Burrell, Rev. R. B. Francis, and Dawson Turner, Esgq., 
extending from 1807 to 1840. The entry is as follows:—‘ King Duck. 
A female shot on Breydon, July 25th, 1813,” and is initialled “D. T.” 
Hunt, who was a Norfolk man, and generally referred to any rarity in his 
native county which came under his notice, does not mention this 
occurrence in his ‘ British Ornithology’ (title-page dated 1815), nor does he 
include the species in his list of Norfolk birds contributed to Stacy’s 
‘History of Norfolk’ (1829). Messrs. Sheppard and Whitear do not 
mention it in their “Catalogue of Norfolk and Suffolk Birds,” printed 
in the ‘ Transactions of the Linnean Society,’ and read in 1824 and 1825. 
The first published notice of the occurrence with which I am acquainted 
occurs in the ‘Sketch of the Natural History of Yarmouth and its Neigh- 
bourhood,’ by the brothers Paget, published in 1834; and here, strange to 
say, although the King Hider is mentioned in precisely the words above 
quoted from the Hooker MS., no mention is made of the Common Hider, 
which must have been known to the authors of the ‘Sketch’ as an 
occasional winter visitant. From that time the King Duck appeared 
unquestioned in all the lists of Norfolk Birds up to, and including, 
Mr. Stevenson’s “Sketch of the Ornithology of Norfolk,” in White’s 
‘Directory’ of the county, published in 1864. In 1879 I edited a new 
edition of Lubbock’s ‘ Fauna of Norfolk,’ and after due consultation with 
Mr. Stevenson and other authorities on Norfolk birds, I thought it best, 
although reluctantly, to append a note (foot-note 149, pp. 161—2), calling 
attention to the extremely unsatisfactory claim of this species to a place in 
the Norfolk avifauna. In addition to the very improbable date (July 25th) 
of the alleged occurrence, Mr. Stevenson very rightly remarks, “In the 
days before Yarrell, I question if Wigg, or any one at Yarmouth, would 
have recognised the female of the King Hider as distinct from the more 
common species,” and with regard to another of Mr. Wigg’s rarities, he 
also calls attention to the fact that “ Lilly Wigg was not an ornithologist 
proper, and yet three of the rarest and most questionable species in the 
Norfolk list rest almost entirely on his authority—the Red-breasted Goose, 
the Harlequin Duck, and the King Eider.” Mr. Stevenson has retained 
the Red-breasted Goose for reasons which will be found in the ‘ Birds of 
Norfolk’ (vol. iii. pp. 39—41), but I had no hesitation in following the 
authority of his last list in White’s ‘ Norfolk’ (edit. 1883), from which both 
the latter birds are omitted; Somateria spectabilis will therefore only be 
found mentioned in a foot-note at p. 192 of the forthcoming third volume 
of the ‘ Birds of Norfolk.’ In the autumn of last year the Rev. Julian G. 
Tuck kindly favoured me with some valuable notes on the birds observed 
by him at Hunstanton, and mentioned a young male Hider which he saw 
