NOTES AND QUERIES. 431 



have communicated itself to the Mice. Certainly at first the blind 

 specimens were all captured in or round the stables, but later they 

 were obtained from all parts of the garden, and the house itself; but 

 no other Horse or other animal suffered, and I am not sure of the date 

 when I first began noticing these blind Mice. — Alfred Heneage 

 Cocks. 



AVES. 



British Examples of the White-spotted Bluethroat. — Under this 

 heading {ante, p. 23), Mr. T. H. Nelson writes that the first British- 

 killed example of this Bluethroat was obtained at Scarborough, and 

 described by the Rev. J. G. Tuck (Zool., June, 1876, p. 4956). On 

 -referring to this note I find that a specimen of the bird was picked up 

 under the telegraph-wires near Scarborough on April 12th, 1876. It 

 was described by Mr. Tuck as a female bird, and containing well- 

 developed eggs. If Mr. Nelson will refer to Dresser's ' Manual of 

 Palaearctic Birds' (1902), p. 62, he will find that Mr. Dresser, in de- 

 scribing the female of the Red-spotted Bluethroat, says that the 

 female and young resemble those of the White-spotted form, "there 

 being no character by which they are distinguishable." At the end 

 of his note Mr. Tuck says that only one other individual of this type 

 is recorded as having been met with in Britain. I may as well 

 mention here that this was the example supposed by Mr. Hancock to 

 have been taken near London in May, 1845. It was, however, pur- 

 chased from a dealer whose traffic with Holland was notorious 

 (cf. Saunders's ' Manual of British Birds,' 1st edit. (1889) ). I think I 

 am therefore justified in saying that the bird I exhibited at a meeting 

 of the B. 0. C. last October, and recorded in ' The Zoologist,' is the 

 first authentic British example of the White-spotted Bluethroat. — 

 Michael J. Nicoll (10, Charles Road, St. Leonards). 



Tawny Pipits (Anthuscampestris) in Sussex. — At the one hundredth 

 meeting of the B. 0. C, held on Oct. 21st, I exhibited two pairs of 

 Tawny Pipits, which I shot at Rye Harbour, in Sussex. I obtained 

 the first pair on Sept. 22nd ; they were feeding on a stretch of swampy 

 ground which had just been left bare by the falling tide, in company 

 with a large flock of Meadow-Pipits. Their, note was a soft double 

 chirp, not unlike that of a Linnet. On Sept. 24th, at the same place, 

 I met another pair, which, like the former, were in immature plumage, 

 though all were just beginning to get a few new feathers on the upper 

 parts. They appeared very pale in coloration when alive, and walked 

 very upright. There have been about nineteen previous records of 

 this species in Sussex, in which county most of the British examples 



