70 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



by Nathaniel Salmon in his ' Antiquities of Surrey,' which I have 

 always regarded as being meant to indicate the Black Grouse, I am 

 not aware of any further notes published upon the importation of this 

 species into Surrey. It may well be that if the actual date of this 

 Col. Challoner's attempt could be ascertained, it may be found that it 

 was considerably later that 1829, and, if so, Mr. le Marchant's in- 

 formant may be quite correct within a few years. I have heard from 

 another source that it is believed that Mr. Bray did introduce the 

 species near Shere; but, as I have said before, nothing definite. — John 



A. Bucknill (Epsom, Surrey). 



Little Bustard in Sussex.— On Dec. 16th, 1901, a specimen of 

 Otis tetrax was shot near Burpham, Sussex, and was sent to Mr. W. 



B. Ellis, taxidermist, Arundel. It was a female, and weighed 26 oz. 

 W. Pebcival Westell (St. Albans). 



[The above is a light weight. The weight of one shot on Drayton 

 Moor, Somersetshire, in 1894, was 2 lb. 2 oz. (cf. Harting's ' Hand- 

 book of British Birds,' p. 165).— Ed.] 



On the Feigning of Injury by the Lapwing (Vanellus vulgaris i to 

 attract attention from its Young. — Allow me to demur to the inter- 

 pretation placed on some words of mine, culled from ' The Zoologist ' 

 (1897, p. 473), by Mr. Bernard B. Riviere {ante, p. 29). If he will 

 turn to pages 27 and 28 of ' The Zoologist ' for 1898, the reason 

 for my repudiation of the views ascribed to me will be at once 

 apparent. Meanwhile, I may repeat, for the benefit of those not 

 possessing the back volume in question, that I should never dream 

 of allying myself with such dogmatic reasoning as would deny the 

 possibility and exceptions to almost any rule. Mr. Riviere not only 

 wrongly infers that by the word " devices " I must mean the simu- 

 lation of injury, but concludes that " we have here two experienced 

 observers expressing their disbelief in the fact that the Lapwing ever 

 employs the ruse of ' shamming wounded ' on behalf of its offspring." 

 Nothing of the kind, so far as I personally am concerned ; Mr. Selous 

 can answer for himself. Moreover, I would invite attention to two 

 words in the sentence I have quoted ; I refer to the words "ever" and 

 " offspring." With regard to the first, who would be so rash, after a 

 prolonged and profound study of Nature, and her frequently incon- 

 sistent and contradictory ways, as to deal in uncompromising nega- 

 tives where she is concerned. I should not. As for the second, I 

 make a vast distinction between eggs in the nest and young birds out 

 of it when dealing with the behaviour of the parent birds. I used the 

 word " nests," implying that eggs in process of incubation were in my 

 mind ; your correspondent, as may be seen, writes of the " offspring " 



