206 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



approach sufficiently near to them; the birds being alarmed, 

 seemed to rise from a cluster and took wing. I afterwards saw a 

 dozen which the same person had taken in his snares or nets." 



Should any of my readers wish to ascertain what a hill of 

 Buffs is like, they should inspect the beautiful case of these 

 birds placed in the Central Hall of the Natural History Museum 

 at South Kensington. The late Capt. Healey, who at one time 

 owned the Ashby decoy, had a case of full-plumaged Euffs, 

 obtained in the Trent district. There are also examples in the 

 Gainsborough Museum, obtained in that neighbourhood; also 

 in private collections in the county. When I first came to Great 

 Cotes, thirty-eight years ago, I knew an old sportsman who, 

 when a young man, went regularly into the Stallinborough and 

 Immingham Marshes in May to shoot Euffs and Eeeves, and 

 Dotterel. His gun was a long-barrelled flint and steel, and 

 great execution he did at times with it. 



The late Mr. Thomas Hopkins, of Limber Grange, told me 

 that he had heard his grandfather, who was a great shooter, talk 

 of seeing the bank between Clee and Tetney Haven, in the spring, 

 covered with Euffs and Eeeves, and so tired with their long flight, 

 that you might almost knock them down with a stick, and that 

 he could soon shoot as many as he could carry. 



The Eev. Edward Elmhirst informed me (in litt. 1886) that 

 he quite well recollects his father shooting Bustards and Euffs 

 and Beeves on Thoresby Common, and his sending a Bustard 

 to Sir Joseph Banks (then living) about sixty-eight years ago. 

 The author of ' Notitiae Ludse,' published in 1884, mentions the 

 Buff and Eeeve in his very imperfect list of birds found in the 

 neighbourhood of Louth. In the early part of this century the 

 Buff and Eeeve used to arrive regularly in the spring in the 

 Humber district. I was familiar with an old fowler, long since 

 departed, who gave me much interesting information in con- 

 nection with the former abundance of these and other birds 

 within his own recollection. Euffs and Eeeves came in flocks 

 in May, at the same time as the Dotterel, and frequented the 

 grass marshes near the Humber, being partial to those fields 

 which were rough and uneven with hassocks ; he had never 

 known any instance of their remaining to nest, and they left 

 again about the end of the same month. What a crowd of 

 pleasant memories rush in as I write these lines about my old 





