FIELD NOTES. 
FUNGI. 
Cordyceps capitata.—In the Annual Report of the 
Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union (The Naturalist, January, 1916, 
p- 44), reference is made to the re-discovery of Cordyceps 
capitata ‘which so far as has yet been ascertained would 
appear to have only three previous British records, and these 
dating back to the years 1786, 1787, and 1803.’ In a list of 
Fungi, contributed to Mason’s “ History of Norfolk ’ (1884), the 
late Dr. Plowright wrote: ‘ Torrubia capitata .... was 
found at Holt by the lady of the Rev. Robert Francis, and sent 
to Sowerby, by whom it was figured in his “ English Fungi,”’ 
which was published in 1779-1809. No specimen was again 
seen of it in Norfolk until 1879, when the Rev. Canon Du Port 
met with a specimen in Hockering Wood.’ Another occurrence 
is recorded by Phillips and Plowright in Grevillea (New and 
Rare British Fungi, No. 145*) : “ magnificent specimens of this 
very rare Torrubia were found October, 1878, by Miss L. M. S. 
Pasley in Hampshire.’ Further search would probably reveal 
other records. In 1902, in company with Dr. Plowright, I saw 
numerous examples of this fungus in a locality near London, 
which I understood was well-known to mycologists in general 
as a habitat of this species.—-T. PETCH. 
—i0:— 
BIRDS. 
A Yorkshire (?) Sooty Tern.—On the 21st of last Sept., while 
visiting a patient, Mr. Sanderson, Doncaster, my attention was 
drawn to a stuffed bird in his house. On examining it I 
saw it was a Tern of a species unknown tome. Mr. Sanderson 
said, ‘If that is any use to you at the museum, you can take it 
away with you.’ This of course I did. On looking it up I saw 
that it was a Sooty Tern. The next time I saw Mr. Sanderson 
I asked him whether he could give me any history of the bird, 
and he furnished the following details. G. Wiles, of Nelson 
Street, Doncaster, was a well-known poacher, who died about 
twenty-five years ago. Wiles shot the bird at Rossington, and 
had it stuffed by Blythe of Cleveland Street. Sometime later 
Wiles’s poaching got him into trouble and he was sentenced to a 
term, of imprisonment ‘with the option.’ His wife, in order to 
raise funds to pay the fine, sold some cases of stuffed birds, and 
Sanderson bought two of them, one being the Sooty Tern, and 
the other, which he also gave to me, containing two Redwings. 
It does not seem likely that a dull coloured and inconspicuous 
bird, such as the Sooty Tern, would be sent home from ‘ foreign 
parts’ as a curiosity ; neither is it probable that such a bird 

1916 Feb. 1. 
