NOT US AND QUERIES. 279 



be this bird's second nest. Possibly its first nest might have been 

 somewhere near where it was singing on the 11th instant. This is 

 the first instance I have known of its nesting in this immediate 

 neighbourhood. I have several times met with it here on migration 

 in early April, and I have heard it singing in the breeding season, but 

 once only, near Barden Town in Wharfedale ; and once a boy brought 

 me a clutch of eggs which he said he had taken in Bingley Wood, 

 which looked very like those of a Chiffchaff . In North-west Yorkshire 

 it is an extremely rare breeding species, in many other parts of 

 Yorkshire it is moderately common, and in some places it may be 

 said to be quite numerous. — E. P. Butterfield. 



Further Notes on Newton's Statements on Birds. — Eeferring to 

 Mr. Harvie Brown's remarks (see ' Zoologist,' p. 235, 1916), I fully 

 agree in the main. I have always recognised that birds vary, and 

 vary widely in some cases, in their habits in their distributional 

 range, and what I have wanted to point out in my notes on Newton's 

 great work, his ' Dictionary of Birds,' has been that Newton has not 

 sufficiently recognised this fact, and consequently his statements are 

 much too absolute in many instances. 



To take one case mentioned by Mr. Harvie Brown. The Stone- 

 chat, he remarks, is a bird which we in Scotland may well designate 

 " not uncommon, but locally dispersed, varying greatly in numbers 

 and nowhere what can be called very abundant save in a few favoured 

 localities in, say, 1900. But what it may be say ten, twenty, thirty, 

 or more years later it is not easy to say ! " In Newton's Dictionary 

 it is stated that this species is a " conspicuous object on almost every 

 furze-grown heath or common in the British Islands " — a statement 

 which, I maintain, is not in consonance with what we now know of 

 its status. In many, indeed in most parts of Yorkshire and other 

 parts of Britain where there are furze-grown heaths or commons it 

 is extremely scarce, if not altogether absent ; and its status has not 

 changed for the last forty, if not fifty, years. I think when Newton 

 states that the Spotted Flycatcher seldom arrives in the British 

 Islands before the latter part of May, this can only apply to a very 

 limited portion of the area of Britain ; and to a lesser degree these 

 remarks apply to the arrival in its breeding-haunts of the Common 

 Sandpiper. In most of the counties in England I think the Sandpiper 

 will arrive before May. There are other statements made by the 

 Professor which it would be dangerous to apply to the whole of 

 Britain, such as his statement that the Swift is the swiftest-flying 

 bird in Britain ; and many of his statements regarding the habits of 



