46G THE ZOOLOGIST. 



be permitted as heretofore, the petitioners stating as follows : — ' We beg to 

 deny most emphatically that cruelty can be justly attributed to stag-hunting 

 with the Royal pack.' The answer to the petition for abolition and the 

 counter-petition for continuance of stag-hunting was the adoption of the 

 latter course. — Henry Simpson. Gordon House, Windsor, Nov. 24." 



These letters should be a sufficient answer to those who share the 

 views of the Memorialists, but whose very proper feelings of humanity have 

 been unnecessarily aroused by a misapprehension of the details of a sport 

 with which they have evidently no personal acquaintance. 



Death of the Sea Lion at the Zoological Gardens.— The Patagonian 

 Sea Lion [Otariajubata), which was presented to the Society by Mr. F. E. 

 Cobb, in May, 1879, and had consequently lived in confinement for more 

 than seventeen years, has recently died. It is just thirty years since these 

 great marine carnivores became known in Europe in a living state. The 

 first example was brought home by Francois Lecomte, a E'rench seaman, 

 who succeeded in taming the animal, which was acquired by the Zoological 

 Society, whose service Lecomte entered. This specimen unfortunately died 

 in the same year, and Lecomte was sent out to procure others ; but of the 

 four with which he started from Port Stanley only one reached England 

 alive. Since then till the present time the Society has always had one or 

 two specimens on view. The feeding of the Sea Lion was invariably the 

 signal for a large crowd of spectators to gather round the pond in which 

 the creature was kept, to witness the performance. This consisted in the 

 Sea Lion mounting a chair on a platform in the centre, and catching fish 

 thrown to it by the keeper, diving from a platform erected at the side of the 

 pond, and coming at call to take fish from the keepers hand. The whole 

 was an excellent example of the influence man can establish over the lower 

 animals by kindness and patient persistence. Some little time since the 

 creature's sight failed, and it was necessary to forgo for awhile the feeding 

 in public, which, however, was afterwards resumed. But it was evident that 

 failure of sight was not the only trouble, and the Sea Lions' pond has now 

 no occupant. 



BIRDS. 



Occurrence of Phylloscopus proregulus in Norfolk. — In the 

 November number of ' The Zoologist,' Mr. Caton Haigh recorded the 

 occurrence of Phylloscopus viridanus on the Lincolnshire coast, and I have 

 now the pleasure of adding yet another rarity, killed this time on the 

 adjoining coast of Norfolk, to the already remarkable list of continental 

 wanderers which have been recorded for this section of the east coast. The 

 past autumn has been exceptionally productive of these " East and West" 

 immigrants, and already the Great Spotted Cuckoo, Aquatic Warbler, and 

 Black-breasted Dipper had been met with (all of which will doubtless be 

 duly recorded by Mr. Gurney in his usual Norfolk notes), when Mr. Pashley, 



