14 



12 



many of the supposed instances of its occurrence have been disproved. We therefore applied to 

 our friend Mr. John Henry Gurney, jun., to whom we are indebted for much laborious work 

 undertaken with a view to a careful analysis of the claims of rare birds to be included in the 

 British list, and we feel sure that the accompanying exhaustive account of the Great Black Wood- 

 pecker in Great Britain will be received with the greatest interest : — 



"Although Sir R. Sibbald claims Picus martins as a bird of Scotland in his ' Historia 

 Animalium in Scotia' (1684), bk. iii. p. 14, there can be no doubt that he uses the term 

 ' Picus martins ' for Woodpeckers generally, as is suggested by Mr. Buxton in the ' Zoologist ' 

 (p. 9730); and I may add that Sir Thos. Brown (1682) uses it in the same sense. 



" The Great Black Woodpecker was added to the catalogue of British Birds in the following 

 vague terms by Latham : — ' I have heard mention made of this species having been once seen in 

 the southern parts of this kingdom ; and Mr. Tunstall tells me that he has been informed, by a 

 skilful ornithologist, of its being sometimes seen in Devonshire.' — Suppl. to Gen. Synopsis,^. 104. 



" Latham probably took his authority for this latter statement from the Tunstall MS., which 

 Headlam discovered, and Fox printed (The Newcastle Museum, p. 60). 



" Montagu says he had heard that one was shot on a willow tree in Battersea fields (Diet. 

 Suppl.). This is commented upon (Zool. p. 9730) ; but the writer does not notice the fact of 

 Battersea being even then far too populous a neighbourhood for such a forest-loving bird as 

 Picus martius. 



" Dr. Richard Pulteney, in his Catalogue of Birds in Dorsetshire, appended to Hutchins's 

 History, says (p. 6) : — 



"' P. martius. Body black; cap scarlet. Linn. 173. [I omit the synonyms.] Black Wood- 

 pecker. Shot in the nursery-garden at Blandford, also at Whitchurch, and other places, in 

 Dorset.' 



" It has been urged, from the description, that these could only have been veritable examples 

 of Picus martius (Field, January 29, 1870) ; but the description is only the Linnean prefix 

 translated from the ' Systema Natura.' (Cf. Pulteney's preface.) 



" One is said to have been shot in Lancashire by Lord Stanley (Mont. Suppl.) ; but the state- 

 ment is shown to be incorrect (Collingwood, ' Historical Fauna of Lancashire and Cheshire,' p. 16, 

 and Zool. pp. 9626-27). 



" The Eev. C. A. Bury states, in ' The Zoologist ' for 1845 (p. 915), that the Ven. Archdeacon 

 Hill shot one many years ago in his garden at Shanklin parsonage. He informs me (in Uteris) 

 that it was hung up in a verandah, and carried off, as was supposed, by a cat ; so that he never 

 saw it himself, though he had no doubt about its being a veritable Picus martius, from the 

 description of Archdeacon Hill, who, however, was no naturalist and had no name for it. 



"At p. 49 of ' The Field Naturalist' (footnote), Mr. Blyth states that he was informed of one 

 having been shot, about 1830, somewhere in the northern vicinity of London. 



" A female, in the late Mr. Newton's collection, is stated in Eowe's ' Perambulation of Dart- 

 moor' (App.) to have been killed near Crediton; and Mr. Rodd states, on the authority of 

 Mr. J. G. Newton (Zool. p. 9874), that Mr. Rowe's informant was Dr. Moore ; but there is no 

 mention of it in either of his lists. 



" Its introduction into Norfolk catalogues rests on the following passage in Yarrell's ' Brit. 



