NOTES AND QUERIES. 405 



Zealand. There are four adult skeletons, ten skulls, and some casts 

 of heads and animals in the United States National Collection at 

 Washington. These are all from Cape Cod, where they were 

 obtained in the fall of 1875. But, upon the whole, very little is 

 known of the distribution and habits of this interesting species. Sir 

 William Turner says he ascertained that the Shetland specimens, like 

 some other species of toothed whales, had been feeding on Cuttle- 

 fishes, quantities of the horny beaks and the undigested skins of the 

 latter being found in the stomachs of the Grampuses. — R. Service 

 (Maxwelltown, Dumfries). 



[We learn from another source that the lower jaw of the speci- 

 men lately captured in the Solway was submitted to Mr. Eagle Clarke, 

 of the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh, and to Sir Wm. 

 Turner, both of whom concurred in assigning it to the species named. 

 A second example has since been obtained. — Ed.] . 



BIRDS. 



The Siberian Pectoral Sandpiper in Norfolk,. — Referring to my 

 previous communication under the above heading (p. 356), T should be 

 glad to add some remarks upon a very typical specimen of Tringa acuminata 

 which has long been in the collection of British birds in the Norwich 

 Museum. I have now verified all the Norfolk-killed examples of Tringa 

 metadata, eight in number, with two exceptions, viz., Hoy's bird, killed in 

 1830, now in the possession of Mrs. Lescher (this has been seen by Mr. 

 Gurney, aud a photograph will be found in Babington's ■ Birds of Suffolk ")> 

 and Mr. Chase's bird, killed in 1887, which that gentleman informs Mr. 

 Gurney is not just now accessible, and find them correctly named ; but 

 on referring to the specimen mentioned by Mr. Stevenson, ' Birds of 

 Norfolk,' ii. p. 367, it proves to be, as I have just said, an undoubted 

 example of the Siberian form. The history of this bird is as follows. In 

 the winter of 1848 — 9, the late Mr. Gurney purchased of a man named 

 Wilmot, for the sum of £5, a Sandpiper 'which he stated he had killed at 

 Yarmouth in the last week of September, 1848 ; this transaction Mr. 

 Reeve, the Curator of the Norwich Museum, perfectly recollects, and he 

 informs me that the bird was set up by Mr. Gurney s birdstuffer, Knights. 

 The occurrence is recorded under the heading of " Pectoral Sandpiper " 

 (Tringa pectoralis) in 'The Zoologist,' 1849, p. 2392, the communication 

 being dated " Feb. 2, 1849." Subsequently the same man brought to 

 Mr. Gurney two freshly killed specimens of> the Red-winged Starling, 

 which, upon enquiry, proved to be of very doubtful origin ; and Mr. Gurney 

 was fully convinced that an attempt was being made to deceive him ; he, 

 therefore, finding the man to be unworthy of trust, sent a second note to 

 ' The Zoologist,' dated August 14th of the same year, and which will be 



