5034 Letters on Natural History. 



Letters on Natural History. By the late Frederick Holme, Esq., 

 to Edward Hearle Rodd, Esq., by whom they are obligingly 

 communicated. 



[These letters, although having no bearing on what may be called the Zoological 

 news of the day, are replete with those records and observations which give to White's 

 1 Selborne' its enduring interest. — E. Newman.'] 



" Meysey Hampton Rectory, 



Fairford, Gloucestershire. 

 " Dear Sir, — I am afraid you will think me extremely tardy in 

 fulfilling the promise I made, of writing to you on the ornithological 

 points we have discussed, but I have since my return home been 

 without my books on the subject, which I had lent during my absence, 

 and have received only within a few days. I will begin with one 

 point on which I remember you wished for information, — the distinc- 

 tion of the Scolopax Sabini : it may be known, according to Sir W. 

 Jardine and Mr. Selby, by having twelve feathers only in the tail, 

 whereas the common snipe has fourteen, and the great or double snipe 

 sixteen : the jack snipe has twelve, but it can never be confounded 

 with S. Sabini. Lesson, in his ' Manuel d'Ornithologie,' mentions a 

 new species of snipe, which he calls Scolopax Brehmii, and which he 

 says resembles the common snipe in everything except in having 

 sixteen feathers in the tail, instead of fourteen, and in being altogether 

 mute : I think it is probably a factitious species, but I mention it in 

 case of your chancing to fall in with any such bird. As far as I 

 could ascertain, while in Ireland, the birds wanting in the Irish Fauna 

 seem nearly the same as those which you told me were rare in Corn- 

 wall : the nuthatch, in particular, is almost unknown, a pair in the 

 Kildare-street Museum having been pointed out to me as almost the 

 only instances of its occurrence in Ireland ; the redstart is also very; 

 rare. The common hawk of those parts I saw most of (Kilkenny,.; 

 Kildare and Queen's County) is the sparrow hawk, which abounds < 

 greatly, and seems to live in families ; the kestrel is not so common. 

 The bank martin seems more generally diffused than in England, 

 saw all the four British species of swallow in company on the riven 

 Nore, below Kilkenny. Speaking of swallows, the great white-belliec 

 swift (Cypselus alpinus) has been shot three or four times in Irelam 

 within a few years, and once in England, at Attleborough, in Norfolk, 

 in September, 1831 ; I think, but am not sure, that a second instance 



