Field Notes. 231 



and on seeing their announcement, Mr. Slater looked his specimen up 

 and found it to be the same species ; since then it has been gathered in 

 Scotland. The plant was growing on bare peat and no trace of bones could 

 be found ; with it was Webera nutans and Cephalozia bicuspidata Dum., 

 the whole patch covering some i5"xio''. The books state it to be a 

 monoicous species, but the distinct areas of male plants seemed to point 

 to a dioicous state. A succession of male and female inflorescences on 

 separate stems, having no apparent structural union, showed a segregation 

 of sex of several years' duration, but careful examination of the material 

 gave no clue to the origin of the male stems, whether from the leaf axils 

 of a monoicous plant or from male producing spores. 



: o : 



Rare Ducks in Upper Nidderdale. — On May 8th, a 

 friend of mine picked up a male Ferruginous Duck {Fuligula 

 nyroca) in Upper Nidderdale. It had been killed by flying 

 against the telephone wires ; and on May gth near the same 

 place a male Gadwall {Anas streperera) was captured. It had 

 been shot at and its wing broken. — R. Fortune. 



Fieldfares near Harrog-ate. — After practically a com- 

 plete absence of these birds during the winter, a large flock 

 consisting of at least 100 birds, put in an appearance in the 

 fields between Ripley and Hampsthwaite. They were first 

 seen on April 28th, and remained in the neighbourhood until 

 May 3rd. An unusually late stay in this neighbourhood is 

 worth recording ; a friend of mine, a good observer, saw 

 a flock of about thirty fieldfares on Masham Common on 

 June 17th, igi6. — R. Fortune. 



Pine Marten in Shropshire — I recently had shown to 

 me the skull of a Marten that had been trapped near Wellington, 

 Shropshire, about 27th May. It was a female and, judging 

 by the worn state of the teeth, an old one. In The Zoo'lopist, 

 1908, I wrote a paper on the Marten in England and Wales, 

 summarizing all the known records up to that year, and 

 showing that the onl}/ districts in which the species still exists 

 in any numbers are the Lake District and the west of North 

 and Central Wales. In spite of this fact the animal now and 

 then turns up in places many miles distant from these districts 

 — places in which it has been long extinct. In Shropshire it 

 became extinct in 1862, yet in April-May, 1907, two females 

 were taken in localities near the Welsh border a few miles 

 apart, while in 1891 one was taken in Eaton Park, Chester. 

 It is inconceivable that the animals were resident in these 

 locahties, or that they could have been there for any length 

 of time without being noticed by keepers, etc. I attribute 

 these occurrences to an innate propensity for roving in this 

 species, and in my paper give manj^ other instances in confirma- 

 tion. This fresh occurrence at Wellington can only be ac- 

 counted for on the same assumption, as it is a populous locality 

 and most of the country preserved. — H. E. Forrest, Shrews- 

 bury. 



1918 July -1. 



