114 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



particulars. The reputed Yorkshire eggs seem to rest on an item in 

 a sale catalogue. There are also two old records, not exactly localized. 

 Willughby's nestlings, found in a nest which had formerly been 

 a Kite's, were perhaps found near his house in Warwickshire (a 

 county in which the Honey-Buzzard has twice since tried to nest), 

 but there is nothing to prove that this is so. The other case, I think, 

 may be consigned to Shropshire with some show of reason. Pennant 

 figured a bird, supposed to be a female, shot on a nest containing 

 two eggs, " blotched over with two reds something darker than those 

 of the Kestrel," a good description of the eggs of the Honey-Buzzard. 

 Pennant says, in his article on this bird in the ' British Zoology,' 

 merely that he was favoured with this specimen by Mr. Plymly ; but 

 I find in the preface to that work that Mr. Plymly is described as of 

 Longnor, Shropshire, in the list of learned and ingenious friends 

 from whom Pennant had received information ; and, as country 

 gentlemen in the eighteenth century did not go much from home, it 

 is more than likely Mr. Plymly got the birds and eggs in question 

 from his own neighbourhood. — 0. V. Aplin (Bloxham, Oxon). 



Decrease of the Corn-Crake, Wryneck, and Nuthatch. — The de- 

 crease of the Corn-Crake as a breeding species, alluded to by Mr. J. 

 Steele Elliott [ante, p. 74), is, I fear, general in England. But the fact 

 must not be overlooked that the numbers of this bird have fluctuated 

 in years gone by, even in Ireland — a country always favoured by this 

 bird. Thompson, in his ' Natural History of Ireland ' (one of the 

 best books on our birds ever written), says that in the north of 

 Ireland the Land-Eail became very much scarcer about the same 

 time as the Partridge, and continued so for fifteen years. They were 

 never more scarce than in 1843, " but within the last very few 

 summers they have, like that species, rapidly increased." This 

 volume was published in 1850. At no time had Thompson heard 

 Corn-Crakes more plentiful than in 1848, and they were equally 

 abundant in 1849. Mr. Ussher, in 1900, wrote of it as common and 

 widespread, but states that it varies considerably in numbers from 

 season to season, and from one locality to another (' Birds of Ire- 

 land'). Sir Wm. Jardine stated that it had decreased in the south 

 of Scotland when he wrote. Ten years previously, in the Vale of 

 Annan, the bird was extremely common, but " during last summer 

 (1841) only one or two pairs being heard within a stretch of several 

 miles " (' British Birds,' vol. iii. p. 331). So that there is a remote 

 chance of the Corn-Crake again becoming common as a breeding 

 species in England. The chance is remote, I fear, for the scarcity 



