440 Schomburgh's Description of Victoria Regina. 



R. Ball, Esq. as having frequented a garden at Middleton, in the 

 county of Cork, about the year 1817, he is satisfied must have been 

 of this species. From the Zoological Journal (Vol. i. p. 590.) we 

 learn that " a specimen of the Oriolus galbula, Linn, was shot in the 

 county of Wexford in May last, (1823,) and is preserved in the Mu- 

 seum of the Dublin Society." In the spring of 1824, a female of 

 this species was shot by a gentleman of my acquaintance near Dona- 

 ghadee, in the county of Down. A male bird was soon afterwards 

 seen about the same place. * Near Arklow, in the county Wick- 

 low, I have been credibly informed that a specimen was procured 

 about the summer of 1827. In a letter from Dr Robert Graves of 

 Dublin, to a mutual friend in Belfast, dated November 1830, it is 

 mentioned that a male golden oriole was shot in the previous sum- 

 mer by one of his pupils in a valley above one of the bays of the 

 county Kerry. 



The Hedge Accentor — Accentor ynodularis, Cuv. — Is very 

 common throughout Ireland. It is not confined to the country, but 

 also takes up its abode in the plantations about the squares, &c. in 

 towns. From a narrow skirting of shrubbery before our house in Bel- 

 fast, I have frequently heard its song trilled forth in mild days dur- 

 ing winter. It has always seemed to me one of the most peaceable 

 of birds, but that it can be moved to enmity, I have the testimony 

 of a friend, who at the end of May once witnessed a fight between 

 two of them, in which one was killed ; the victor after having slain 

 his antagonist, twice or thrice uttered a song apparently of triumph, 

 at the finale of which he each time flew at and struck his victim. 



The bill and legs of the hedge accentor are occasionally in this 

 country covered with large excrescences, like those described in the 

 Magazine of Natural History, Vol. vi. p. 154. " Hedge sparrow" is 

 the name applied to this species in the north. It is very agreeably 

 treated of in the Journal of a Naturalist, p. 148. 



VII. — Dr Robert H. Schomburglis description of Victoria Regina, 

 Gray. Plate XV. 



The character of grandeur so peculiar to the productions of a tro- 

 pical sun and a humid climate is highly developed in the object of 

 the above description. The Holy Cyamus or Pythagorean Bean 

 is said to have been derived from a plant closely related to the 



* These are the same individuals alluded to by Mv Templeton, Mag. Nat. 

 Hist. Vol. i. p. 405. New Series. 



