294 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



Gainsborough, November 7, 174.8, and painted 

 from the bird itself by S. Goodwin, of Oakham." 

 Presumably it was killed in the coverts at Exton 

 Park, near Oakham. 



Daniel, in his Rural Sports (vol. iii., pp. 167, 

 168), mentions several instances of white Wood- 

 cocks that had come under his observation. 

 Amongst others, he notices one "completely 

 white," that was shot by a keeper of Sir John 

 Lade's at Salehurst, in Sussex ; a second with both 

 wings white, killed the same year at Box, in Somer- 

 setshire ; and a third, " milk-white," killed by Mr 

 Ludlow's gamekeeper near Westbury, Wilts. In 

 1833 a Woodcock with white feathers in the wings 

 was observed in a covert at Monkleigh, near 

 Torrington, Devon. The same bird, or one of 

 precisely similar plumage, reappeared in the same 

 place for four consecutive seasons, and was so often 

 shot at and missed, that it became known to people 

 in the neighbourhood as "the witch." In 1837, 

 however, it was at length shot at Portledge on the 

 property of the Rev. J. T. Pine Coffin, who had 

 it preserved. The late Mr Henry Stevenson, in 

 the second volume of his Birds of Norfolk (p. 295), 

 says : — 



" The most beautiful specimen of the Woodcock 

 I ever saw was killed at Hanworth, near Aylsham, 

 on November 6, 1856. Like one described by Mr 

 Edward Newman in The Zoologist for 1855 (p. 463 1 ), 

 all the markings peculiar to the Woodcock in its 

 usual plumage were in this bird more or less faintly 

 indicated by the most delicate buff, or fawn tint, on 



