Vol. xxxvi.] 86 



following remarks : — " I am sending you an egg from a 

 Great Tit's nest at Great Malton Rectory stained black. 

 The Rev. N. W. Paine informs me that there were eight in 

 the nest, all covered over like this one ; the nest was in a 

 fork of a tree and open to the sky^ which may account for 

 some exudations having got into it.'^ 



Lord Rothschild read the following note on Scolopax 

 saturata Horsf ., and its subspecies rosenhergi Schleg. : — 



When earlier in the Session I laid some notes on this 

 subject before the Club, I most unfortunately entirely over- 

 looked Count Salvadori's explicit paper on the same subject 

 in the 'Ibis' for 1889, pp. 107-112. He there fully and 

 accurately states the differences between saturata and I'osen- 

 bergi and enumerates all the known examples, viz., five 

 specinaens and the almost destroyed type of saturata, and 

 three specimens of rosenhergi. Count Salvadori emphasizes 

 the point that all the three rosenhergi came from Arfak. 

 Between 1889 and 1916 a large number (some fourteen 

 specimens) of rosenhergi have been procured in various parts 

 of the Owen Stanley Range in S.E. New Guinea, but only 

 a very few saturata have been obtained in Java and Sumatra. 

 Count Salvadori, being one of the earlier school of ornitho- 

 logists, does not recognize sul)species and, accordingly, in 

 the article referred to, treats saturata and rosenhergi as two 

 valid species. In view of the recent discovery of saturata in 

 Sumatra, it is more than likely it will be found in one form 

 or another on most of the intervening islands between Java 

 and New Guinea, providing the mountains on these islands 

 reach a sufficient altitude. The fact that on Obi and 

 Halmaheira in the Moluccas a totally different Woodcock, 

 N. ruchusseni Schleg., has been obtained, is no obstacle to 

 the eventual discovery on some of the other islands of a 

 saturata form, as would appear to be Count Salvadori's view, 

 judging by his note on p. 108. Whether, however, we do 

 receive our Woodcock from any of these islands or not, 

 there can be no doubt that rosenhergi is the representative of 

 saturata in New Guinea ; therefore I consider we are justified 



