NOTES AND QUERIES. 278 



Sardinian Warbler, a misleading name, conducive to confusion with Sylvia 

 sarda) is a common species in the South of France and the Peninsula (as 

 well as in other parts of Southern Europe), and might easily be swept up 

 with the tide of migration during a gale to our western shores. — Howard 

 Saunders (7, Radnor Place, Hyde Park, W). 



Distribution of the Lesser Whitethroat in the S.W. of England.— 

 In the review of Mr. Pidsley's " Birds of Devonshire," in the last number 

 of « The Zoologist,' my brother, Mr. G. F. Mathew, is quoted as an 

 authority for the nesting of the Lesser Whitethroat [Sylvia curruca) in 

 North Devon. He certainly was in error when he made this communi- 

 cation to the 'Naturalist.' I have myself never seen the Lesser White- 

 throat either in Cornwall or Devonshire, to which counties it is only a 

 chance visitant. Mr. Rodd regarded it as only an occasional migrant in 

 the autumn. Mr. Gatcombe, my friend and constant correspondent for 

 many years, wrote to me that he had never satisfied himself that he had 

 seen the Lesser Whitethroat in South Devon. Colonel Montagu, who was 

 familiar with this little bird, and had studied it closely in North Wilts, 

 never met with it in Devonshire ; and in some of his unpublished notes in 

 my possession, in an account of a driving tour in West Somerset early in 

 May, mentions the delight he felt in detecting a single Lesser Whitethroat 

 on the beach at Minehead, as it was so great a rarity in that part of the 

 kingdom. During the eleven years I resided at Bishop's Lydeard, in 

 West Somerset, I only once saw a pair of Lesser Whitethroats, while my 

 friend and neighbour, Mr. Cecil Smith, had only one local specimen in his 

 collection, and had never been able to secure a nest. Where I now reside, 

 at the extreme east of the county, close on the borders of Wilts, this 

 species occurs regularly every summer, but it is far from common, my 

 garden being the place where I usually see it. During the eight years I 

 lived at Stone Hall, in North Pembrokeshire, I never came across a Lesser 

 Whitethroat, nor did I ever see one in the S.W. of Wales ; and the few 

 instances I ever had reported to me of its occurrence were not trustworthy 

 The following I copy from my MSS. notes on the Lesser Whitethroat in the 

 S.W. peninsula : — " Although fairly common in the east of Somerset, and in 

 the north-eastern parts of Dorsetshire, where Mr. Mansel-Pleydell says 

 it is generally distributed, but not common, this little bird shuns the 

 extreme West of England, being very rare in the west of Somerset and 

 Dorset, and unknown in Devon and Cornwall, except as a chance visitor, 

 or as a straggler with other birds in the flocks departing from this country 

 in the autumn. Mr. Rodd states that it is only met with at Scilly 

 occasionally in the autumn, and is unknown at other times in Cornwall. 

 Dr. Bullmore writes, ' It is occasionally seen, but is not nearly so plentiful 

 as the Common Whitethroat'; but I imagine that he is mistaken, and 

 that Mr. Rodd's statement that this warbler never visits Cornwall js 



ZOOLOGIST. — JULY, 1891. Y 



