THE PINE GROSBEAK AS A BRITISH BIRD. 127 



thoroughly examining the one in the Museum, have failed to 

 detect the least indication of its having been in confinement, and 

 there is no doubt about its being a Pine Grosbeak, for, at my 

 request, they have compared and matched it with a specimen 

 procured by Wheelwright in Sweden. As regards the date, there 

 is an important piece of corroborative evidence in ' The Field' of 

 March 22nd, 1862, where Wheelwright, writing from Sweden 

 under his well-known nom-de-plume of an " Old Bushman," about 

 the plumage of the Pine Grosbeak, says : — " This winter [i. e. 

 1861-2] they have been unusually numerous, and about forty 

 specimens have passed through my hands." Nothing is more 

 likely than that some of the birds seen should have crossed the 

 sea, just as in 1884, — when, on the 12th of September, great 

 numbers of Bluethroats appeared in Heligoland (' Report on Migra- 

 tion,' p. 44), and on that very day appeared also in Norfolk, — and 

 if the Pine Grosbeaks did cross the North Sea, where would they 

 be more likely to occur than on the coast of Yorkshire ? 



28. In ' The Zoologist' for 1883 (p. 222), Mr. R. M. Christy 

 reports a Pine Grosbeak shot at Little Abington, in Cambridge- 

 shire, in January, 1882. I have examined this bird. It is a 

 good red male, and is said to have been shot by a groom in the 

 vicarage-garden. It was sent to a village birdstuffer named 

 Unwin, who sent it to Travis, the taxidermist of Saffron 

 Walden, to whom we are indebted for its correct identification, and 

 on whose authority its reliability and rescue undoubtedly rest. 



29. In the late Mr. Churchill Babington's ' Birds of Suffolk,' 

 the author, on the authority of the late Rev. F. Tearle, of Gazeley, 

 mentions (p. 234), a Pine Grosbeak shot at Heigham in 1874. 

 Correspondence has failed to trace its whereabouts, and Mr. 

 Babington has marked this and the next as doubtful. 



30. Mr. Babington also mentions, on the authority of the 

 Rev. H. T. Frere, of Burston Rectory, Diss, another shot near 

 Bury, about 1830. Mr. Frere thinks it was 1836 : whatever the 

 precise date may have been, it was preserved by Head, a bird- 

 stufler at Bury, and afterwards acquired (as Mr. Frere believes) 

 by the late Mr. Vernon Wollaston. 



31. Mr. T. J. Monk, of Lewes, has favoured me with the 

 sight of a handsome yellow male bird of this species, obtained at 

 Shoreham, which he procured through the late Mr. Swaysland. 

 It is said to have been killed near the old bridge, far away from 



