48 On the Ornithology of Wilts [Charadriadcu]. 



of the accidental visitors to this country, the straggler whose 

 appearance I will now relate being only the fifth individual whose 

 occurrence in Great Britain has been recorded. It was met with 

 by Mr. Walter Langton of Wandsworth, Surrey, when out shooting 

 on the estate of Mr. Stephen Mills, at Elston, near Tilshead, on 

 Salisbury Plain, on Oct. 2nd, 1855 (very near the same spot where 

 the Pratincole, last described, was found). It was first seen on an 

 open piece of down land called Eastdown, which was particularly 

 bare of vegetation, as is generally the case at that season of the 

 year with all down lands. The day was somewhat stormy, the 

 wind south-west, and Mr. Langton and his companion were following 

 a wild covey with a brace of young pointers, when one of them 

 stood on the open down, and suddenly a Cream-coloured Courser 

 took wing, almost immediately under the dog's nose, and apparently 

 flew at the dog's face, who indeed snapped at the bird. Indeed in 

 a second letter with which Mr. Langton most obligingly favoured 

 me at the time, he calls particular attention to this strange fear- 

 lessness on the part of the bird ; which however is quite in accord- 

 ance with its general character. It then flew with a lazy kind of 

 flight about two hundred yards, and again settled on the open 

 down, and began to run at a moderate pace, reminding Mr. Langton 

 of the gait of the Landrail. That gentleman immediately followed 

 it, and when within forty yards, shot it as it ran upon the ground. 

 It was not heard to utter any cry, and the keepers who were present 

 conjectured it to have been wounded : but as they seem to have 

 arrived at that conclusion solely from the unwillingness of the 

 bird to take flight, and its apparent disregard of danger, for which, 

 its natural disposition fully accounts, no regard need be paid to 

 that surmise. When first found by the dog, it was lying so close, 

 that until it rose, though from the bare down, nothing was seen of 

 it. It was sent to Mr. Gardner, the well known taxidermist in 

 Oxford Street, who stuffed it, and who kindly communicated with 

 me on the subject. 



The Cream-coloured Courser, Swift-foot, or Plover, is a native 

 of the sandy deserts of Africa, to which its pale buff plumage 

 closely assimilates in colour, but though I kept a constant look out 



