8716 



Birds. 



proper to the sandy coast upon which they were found. The fact of 

 the seeds being all those of British plants probably shows them to 

 have been on the coast some days." Mr. Alfred Newton, to whom 

 the carcases of two of the Holme specimens were sent by Mr. South- 

 well for the purpose of dissection, suggested a careful examination of 

 the small flinty substances found so abundantly in the gizzards, 

 shrewdly suggesting that some mineralogist might recognize in them 

 " fragments washed down into the Kirghish Steppes from the Altai 

 mountains ; or the birds might have renewed their stock of grind- 

 stones as they crossed the Ural." Acting upon this hint, Mr. South- 

 well submitted some of them to a geological friend, who writes as 

 follows : — (i As to the stones found in the gizzard, 1 do not think they 

 were got on the Norfolk coast. I doubt whether the sand there would 

 afford such large grains. They may have been picked up on their 

 native steppes, and probably the same stones may remain in the 

 gizzard for an indefinite length of time. The stones, so far as one 

 can see, seem to be fragments of quartz and feldspar, and are there- 

 fore probably granitic. I have shown them to one of our best geolo- 

 gists, an F.G.S., who concurs with me, and thinks that nothing 

 decisive can be predicated from them. They could all be easily 

 matched in England." I may here add that the later specimens dis- 

 sected by myself have had fewer flinty panicles in their gizzards, and 

 those much smaller in size and more mixed with sand. In the early 

 examples the size and peculiarly angular appearance of these white 

 fragments would attract the notice of any one accustomed to examine 

 the internal economy of granivorous birds ; and as it is generally un- 

 derstood that such stones are retained in the gizzard so long as their 

 triturating powers remain unimpaired by the action of the stomach, it 

 is most likely that on their first arrival our Tartar visitants contained 

 their native grindstones. 



Having examined a series of just five-and- twenty, consisting of ten 

 males and fifteen females, I have been struck with the general simi- 

 larity of the specimens according to sex. The less matured males 

 differ only from those more adult (judging from the largely developed 

 state of the testes) in having the ground colour of the plumage some- 

 what duller, and their darker markings less clearly defined ; but the 

 extremely dark tints of some old males, especially in the deep gray of 

 the breast and more clouded appearance of the wing-coverts, are, I 

 imagine, attributable to old and somewhat soiled feathers, which in a 

 few weeks would have been replaced by others. In one or two fine 

 old males very recently killed (for the brighter portion of the plumage 



