488 PTEROCLIDA. 
PALLAS’S SAND-GROUSE. 
SYRRHAPTES PARADOXUS (Pallas). 
No event in the annals of ornithology has excited more interest 
than the irruptions of Pallas’s Sand-Grouse. These, as regards the 
British Islands, were first called to notice by a few appearances in 
Norfolk, Carnarvonshire and Kent, in July and November 1859; 
while several examples were obtained on the Continent during the 
same year. In 1863 the ripples of a far larger wave of invasion 
spread westward over Europe; Heligoland being reached by 
May 21st, the date on which our first visitors of that year were shot 
in Northumberland, out of a flock of fourteen. Next day about 
twenty reached Staffordshire, and numbers were subsequently found 
in many parts of the British Islands; the majority on the eastern 
side, from Kent to Caithness, and a few alighted in the Shetlands. 
Inland, as well as in the south of England, occurrences were not want- 
ing; and, while they were less plentiful in the west, it was in Pem- 
brokeshire that the last survivor was shot, in February 1864. One 
bird even wandered to Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, and several 
were killed in Ireland, some of them as far west as co. Donegal. All 
