PTEKOCLID^. 259 



the greater number of occurrences were reported from the Eastern and 

 North-eastern Counties ; but in this second visitation the birds treated the 

 West of England more liberallj', having been recorded from all the four 

 counties of the S.W. Peninsula. In North Devon a flock of seven 

 appeared on Lundy Island, and remained there for three weeks without 

 being shot at or molested. Mr. J. Gr. Hamling, of The Chase, Barnstaple, 

 recorded one forwarded to the bird-stuffer in that town, which had been 

 shot with three or four others (we fear this may have been the little 

 Lundy flock) at Hartland, about the 3rd or 4th of June. None appear to 

 have been obtained this time in the south of the county. In Somerset a 

 flock of eleven appeared on May 2oth, on Steart Island, in Bridgwater 

 Bay, and one was shot. On the afternoon of the same day two were 

 seen at Charlynch, near Bridgwater, by the Rev. W. A. Bell, the Hector. 

 A small flock passed close to Mr. W. Ayshford Sanford, in his grounds 

 at Nynehead one Sunday, the date of which is unknown to us. This 

 was only a short distance from the eastern boundary of Devon. One is 

 reported to have occurred at Burnham, and we heard of some having 

 been seen near Weston-super-Mare : one was exhibited at a meeting of 

 a Naturalists' Club in Bristol, which had been shot somewhere near the 

 city in Somerset. We ourselves were not lucky enough to see any of the 

 Sand-Grouse on the occasion of their visit to this country in 1863, but 

 were more fortunate at the end of June 1888, when we passed close to a 

 flock of upwards of twenty as we were driving to Bath. They were in a 

 turnip-field where the young turnips were just showing above the ground, 

 and were about a long gunshot in from the hedge. On first noticing 

 them we took them for Turtle Doves, but as we have never in this part 

 of Somerset seen more than a single Turtle Dove, or at most a pair, at a 

 time, we looked more closely at the birds, and then easily detected thenx 

 to be Pallas's Sand- Grouse. Only a few days before we had watched and 

 studied a live Sand-Grouse in the Western Aviary of the Zoological Gardens, 

 and at once recognized the same waddling gait in the few birds which 

 were moving. The greater number were squatting on the ground, appa- 

 rently asleep ; one or two were preening their feathers, and occasionally 

 stretching themselves, with precisely the same gestures as the bird wo 

 had seen in London. We looked out for them again as we repassed the 

 spot in the afternoon (it was in the parish of Norton St. Philip), but 

 they had disappeared. 



In Dorsetshire, Mr. Mansel-PleydcU recorded six which were picked up 

 dead or dying, on May 1:8th, under the telegra])h-wircs, at Stoljorough, 

 Wareham, Mr. G. ]{. Corltin (Zool. 1888, p. 1^88) states that at the end 

 of June, or beginning of July, a tlock frc(|uented a sandy piece of heath- 

 land on the borders of Dorsetshire and Hampshire, and that several were 

 killed and eaten; and, further, mcnlinn.s a male bird which was killed on 

 18th June in a garden near W'imborne, which was terribly mntilaled. 

 In the Land's End district, in Corinvall, a tlock of eleven ajjpenred in 

 May : three were killed, and one captured alivo. This bird ^Ir. Tlinnias 

 Cornish, of Penzance, succeeded in keeping alivo for three months, when 

 it unfortunately died during its moult (Zool. 1888, p. 348 ; iSS'.t, p. lUS). 



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