STATUS OF THE WOODCHAT IN GREAT BRITAIN. 345 



bird runs along the whole of the under side of the primaries, did 

 not extend to the tip, and the three outermost wing-coverts were 

 not, like the others, yellow with a single dark stripe along 

 the middle, but were marked at the tips with large irregular 

 bars. Several of the young bird's marbled primaries and mottled 

 tail-feathers were by this time moulted, and were replaced with 

 feathers which were exactly like those of the adult bird. 



[Here follows a description of the Plate (pi. iv.), on which are figured 

 (1) a newly-hatched chick, (2) a chick of thirteen days old, and (3) an 

 immature feather with the " down-pencil" on the tip.] 



THE STATUS OF THE WOODCHAT, LANIUS RUFUS, 

 IN GREAT BRITAIN. 



By 0. V. Aplin. 



Willughby refers clearly to the Woodchat as " another sort 

 of Butcher-bird," but does not state where his specimen was 

 procured, and the earliest mention of it as a presumably British 

 bird is to be found in Gilbert White's 25th letter to Pennant. 

 " A gentleman (he says) sent me lately a fine specimen of the 

 Lanius minor cinerascens cum macula in scapulis alba Rail ; which 

 is a bird that, at the time of your publishing your two first 

 volumes of ' British Zoology,' I find you had not seen. You have 

 described it well from Edwards' drawing." This letter is dated 

 from Selborne, the 30th August, 1769. Montagu in 1802 had 

 never seen a specimen, and doubted if it was a distinct species ; 

 but in 1813, in the " Supplement " to his ' Ornithological 

 Dictionary,' he expresses himself satisfied on this point. He 

 remarks, however, "it is esteemed so rare in England, that we 

 question if there is at present a specimen in existence that was 

 killed in the island." Selby in 1825 could not include it in the 

 first edition of his ' Illustrations of British Ornithology,' though 

 he did so in the second (1833). 



In Professor Newton's edition of ' Yarrell,' after an enumer- 

 ation of some specimens and nests referred to hereafter, the 

 following details are given : — "The bird has been obtained near 

 Brighton, and a second time in Kent, while some four or five 

 examples are said to have been procured in Suffolk, and about as 

 many in Norfolk, though the assertion of Hunt, that it had bred 



