EAST LONDON 209 



pouring out a continuous torrent of song. It 

 attracted a good deal of attention, and all the 

 Hackney Marsh sportsmen who possessed guns 

 were fired with the desire to shoot it. Every 

 Sunday morning some of them would get into 

 the field to watch their chance to fire at the 

 bird as it rose or returned to the ground ; and 

 this shooting went on, and the ' feathered frenzy,' 

 still untouched by a pellet, soared and sung, 

 until cold weather came, when it disappeared. 



To return to the White House. This has for 

 the last ninety years been in the possession of a 

 family named Beresford, who have all had a 

 taste for collecting rare birds, and their collec- 

 tion, now split up and distributed among the 

 members of the family, shows that during the last 

 four or five decades Hackney Marsh has been 

 visited by an astonishing variety of wild birds. 

 The chief prize is a cream-coloured courser, the 

 only specimen of this rare straggler from Asia 

 ever obtained in the neighbourhood of London. 

 It was shot on the morning of October 19, 1858, 

 and the story is that a working man came fuU 

 of excitement to the White House to say that he 

 had just seen a strange bird, looking like apiece 

 of whity-brown paper blowing about on the 



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