tJt.j/C 



been recorded by Mr. C. A. Wright from Malta, and by Messrs. Jaubert and Barthelemy 

 Lapommeraye from the South of France. 



According to the last-named authors one specimen was captured out of a flock of Lapwings 

 by a M. Lebrun, of Montpellier, and is now in the collection of M. Doumet, at Cette. Twice 

 has it occurred in Malta, as observed by Mr. Wright, a gentleman who must be ranked among 

 the most indefatigable of recent contributors to European ornithology. From his exhaustive 

 account of this species published in 'The Ibis' for 1865 (p. 459), we extract the following 

 observations relative to the capture of the White-tailed Lapwing in Malta : — 



" On the 18th of October, 1864, in one of my frequent visits to the game-stalls in the Malta 

 market, my attention was struck by a strange-looking bird, which was offered to me for sale as a 

 Cream-coloured Courser — a somewhat rare visitor, but of which I had picked up, in the course of 

 several years, from the same stall, one or two specimens, and a few others from other sources. 

 This it certainly was not. On consulting such books as I had at hand, I could find nothing 

 answering to it in Bree's ' Birds of Europe ' or Degland's ' Ornithologie Europeenne ; ' and being 

 sure it did not belong to any species hitherto observed in England, I was altogether at a loss to 

 know what it was. The short description, in ' The Ibis,' for 1859 (pp. 52, 53), of Vanellus 

 leucurus, given by Mr. E. C. Taylor, in his ' Ornithological Reminiscences of Egypt,' to which I 

 subsequently referred, was sufficient to satisfy me that I was in possession of one of these birds, 

 so rare in European collections that Mr-. Taylor observes there is but one, unnamed, footless 

 specimen in the British Museum, and in the Paris Museum at the Jardin des Plantes he could 

 not find it at all. It was, he adds, perhaps the rarest species which he and his party met with 

 in Egypt, though on an extensive tract of marshy country, a few miles south-west of Thebes, it 

 was abundant and several were shot. In confirmation of this, I am informed that a gentle- 

 man who returned to Egypt this winter met with a good many near Thebes during his visit 

 last year 



" I could not learn any particulars whether this wanderer was in company with others when 

 shot. All that I could ascertain was that it was obtained two days previously (16th Oct.), near 

 Casal Zabbar, on the east coast of the island. For some time prior to this, strong southerly and 

 easterly winds were prevalent. It had probably found its way from Egypt to Malta by way of 

 Benghazi or Tripoli, although, at this season, the contrary course might be expected, birds in 

 general migrating, in the autumn and winter, from a northerly to a southerly region. But I am 

 more inclined to think that it was accidentally blown off the coast of North Africa, and was thus 

 forced to make an unwilling journey in unknown parts, rather than that it was returning, in a 

 course of regular migration from a visit to Europe, to its former haunts. 



" I have since received a female specimen of Chcetusia leucura from Mr. Stafford Allen, at 

 Alexandria, who writes to me as follows: — 'Although I have generally looked upon this as a 

 very rare bud, having only once seen it alive (and was then unable to shoot it), it seems to be not 

 very uncommon somewhere near Alexandria, since I have seen, I should think, not less than 

 twenty specimens here during the last two months (Nov. and Dec), sometimes as many as three 

 or four in one morning. I have preserved four or five ; but as they mostly have their throats 

 cut, according to the Mahommedan custom, it is troublesome work.' In a postscript of January 

 3rd, he adds : — ' This morning I saw four Chcetusia leucura in the market ; but none were very 



