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V. — Note on the Ornithology of Cornwall for the year 1873-4. — By 

 E. H. KoDD. 



TF the neighbouring parish of Probus had not come to our 

 -«- assistance, the Spring Meeting of the Eoyal Institution of 

 Cornwall would probably have passed off without any Ornitholo- 

 gical report of any interest from my Journal as regards the 

 County. 



There was no occurrence of any interest or addition to our 

 calendar of British Birds from the time of your last Spring 

 Meeting to the month of January, the winter having passed off 

 without the slightest severity and without giving us anything like 

 the average number of our common wild fowl, and no instance of 

 any rare member of the British family of anatidee. There aj)pears, 

 however, to have been a very large increase of Snipes this year 

 everywhere, and it will, no doubt, be remembered by many, that 

 several severe winters some years since, coming in succession, 

 caused our markets to be deluged with these birds and the waders 

 generally ; and for several years after the dwarfed numbers were 

 very apparent, till last year, when the numbers all over the moors 

 of Cornwall from east to west, including the Lizard district, 

 exceeded anything that had been before seen, and especially in 

 the open moors of Goonhelly. 



The pages of the " Zoologist " are silent as to any addendum 

 to the Cornish avifauna till the month of January, when I re- 

 corded the capture of a very beautiful species of Thrush which 

 is figured and named by our British Ornithologists as " White's 

 Thrush," an oriental species which wanders occasionally from 

 China and other countries in Asia to our shores; the specimen 

 now under notice making, I think, the ninth instance of its 

 occurrence in Britain. It is of much larger size than any of our 

 British Thrushes, exceeding the well-known Missel Thrush by 

 one third at least ; and it is twice as heavy as our common Song 

 Thrush. It is distinguished also from all our Thrushes by the 

 mottled character of the dorsal plumage, that portion in all the 

 British Thrushes being of an uniform olive brown. It was ob- 



