154 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Leadenhall, and one of Mr. Cobum's, killed in Ireland lately. Mr. Mac- 

 pherson has one very remarkable Scaup Duck, a female by his own dissec- 

 tion, shot April 28th> 1888, with the greyest back of any female Scaup I 

 have seen, and a black face instead of a white one, which I think must 

 certainly be an instance of a female assuming male plumage, and such he 

 also considers it, but the ovary was not diseased. Its cheeks, however, 

 and the side of the neck, are as brown as those of any female Scaup, and 

 the breast is a mixture of brown and black. Mr. Chapman, however, tells 

 me that in his opinion the old female Scaups almost lose the white face 

 every summer, adding that he has frequently seen in a private garden near 

 Newcastle, an old female Scaup at midsummer, with a sooty black head 

 and only a trace of the white face remaining. A female Scaup, shot in 

 Sweden by Mr. J. P. Johnson on July 2nd, as he tells me, has a light- 

 coloured face of a brownish or dirty white tint, which bears out Mr. 

 Chapman's observation. It does seem that there is a good deal more yet 

 to be learnt about the plumage of our common ducks than is to be found in 

 books; and it is further complicated by the fact that females of some 

 of them occasionally assume the male plumage. — J. H. Gurney (Keswick 

 Hall, Norwich). 



Hybrid Sparrows. — When commenting upon a hybrid Tree and 

 House Sparrow, forwarded for inspection by Mr. Tuck (p. 112), I observed 

 that I did not remember more than one reported case of such a hybrid 

 occurring in a wild state, and referred to the one mentioned by M. Suchetet 

 as having been taken in France in December, 1868. I had overlooked 

 the two other cases recorded by Mr. Macpherson in his ' Fauna of Lake- 

 land.' He states (at p. lxxx of his Introduction) that he had, on two 

 different occasions, seen wild birds which presented all the appearance 

 of having been bred from a male Tree Sparrow and female House Sparrow, 

 and of these he has given full particulars. The second of these examples 

 was obtained at Aiglegill, so recently as the spring of 1892. It follows, 

 therefore, that Mr. Tuck's specimen is not the first of the kind which has 

 been procured in a wild state in England. — J. E. Harting. 



EEPTILIA. 



Palmated Newt in Worcestershire and Shropshire. — During the 

 height of the present breeding-season (middle of March), I have found this 

 species particularly abundant in the many small pools and water-holes of 

 the Wyre Forest. They are common on both sides of the Dowles Brook, 

 which runs through the forest, forming the boundary line between 

 Worcestershire and Shropshire. Newts in general are known as "asgulls" 

 in this locality. To the best of my knowledge this species has not been 

 recorded before for either of these two counties. — J. S. Elliott (Dixons 

 Green, Dudley). 



