AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 249 



record in my possession verbatim from the ' Field ' 

 newspaper of November 15, 1879 : — " Buffon's Skua 

 near Northampton. I send by rail rather a high 

 specimen of a Skua that was shot on a ploughed farm 

 called Moulton Park, about two and a half miles 

 from this town. It was shot on the 20th of last 

 month by a servant on the farm ; he informed me that 

 he had seen it sitting about the ploughed land for a 

 day or two previously. I am not quite certain what 

 it is. ^^ ill you please tell me in your next paper X 

 William Tomalin (24 York Parade, Northampton, 

 Nov. 5). [The bird w^as a Buffon's Skua. Having 

 been killed nearly three weeks, it was, as our cor- 

 respondent says, ' rather high.' — Ed.]" An immature 

 stuffed bird of this species was sent to me on 

 August 24, 1891, by Mr. J. P. Cox, of the Rectory 

 Farm, Overstone, with the information that it had 

 been picked up dead there on October 12, 1883. 

 The last occurrence of this Skua in our county 

 that has come to my knowledge is thus recorded by 

 me in the 'Zoologist' for 1889, under the date of 

 November 1: — "An immature male Buffon's Skua 

 was picked up alive, but with a thigh broken, close to 

 the L. & N. W. Eailway, not far from Thorpe Station. 

 My cousin, the Rev. W. Powys, who met the finder 

 of the bird a few minutes after the capture, was of 

 opinion that the injury had been caused by shot, but 

 he bought, killed, and forwarded the specimen to me 

 at Bournemouth, where I received it on the 4th inst., 

 and I have no doubt that the fracture was caused by 

 the bird's flying against the telegraph wires." In 

 general habits this bird is said to resemble closely 

 the species last treated of, but its breeding-haunts 

 appear to be conflned to the arctic regions of Asia 



