BIRDS CLAIMING TO BE ACCOUNTED BRITISH. 255 
SPOTTED SANDPIPER. 
Some time ago I set myself to collect all the recorded 
instances of the Spotted Sandpiper in Britain, and a most 
extraordinary task I found I was in for. I was indeed 
astonished at the number of occurrences, but still more at 
the feeble foundation on which most of them rested, I 
ended by collecting such a tangled skein of conflicting 
evidence, that I laid the job aside in sheer despair, but 
have now gone through it again, and present a careful 
resumé with all the proof and all the disproof that I ob- 
tained. The 277th plate of Edwards’ “ Gleanings of Natural 
History,” to start with the original offender, represents the 
Spotted Sandpiper from Pennsylvania. This distinguished 
naturalist and talented draughtsman fancied that it was 
also found in England, and in the accompanying letterpress 
he mentions a specimen from Essex, which “differed in no 
respect from the American Tringa, but zz detng without 
spots on tts under side, except on the throat, where it had a 
few small, longish, dusky spots down the shafts of the 
feathers” (VI. p. 141). 
Of course the want of spots shows it to have been a 
Common Sandpiper, but I have still further proof. I have 
found a MS. note in the handwriting of Donovan, in a copy 
of Montagu’s Dictionary (in the possession of Canon 
Tristram), saying that this bird, after standing in the 
Leverian Museum twenty years, passed to him. Therefore 
it is a fair surmise that Plate CLXXXIV. of his “ British 
Birds” is its portrait, and no one would want to be told 
after looking at it that it represents the Common, not the 
Spotted Sandpiper. 
And now we come to the so-called Spotted Sandpiper of 
Bewick (B. B., 1st ed., II., p. 111), which is the specimen 
mentioned in Wallis’ “History of Northumberland.” His 
admirable woodcut, which is much too accurate to leave 
