200 OLIVER V. aplin: a visit to rainworth lodge. 



birds. The most remarkable among the historical specimens of 

 British-killed rarities are examples of the Iceland Falcon, Orkney, 

 1876; Red-footed Falcon, Bridlington, 1865; Scop's Owl, Renwick, 

 1875; Black-breasted Dipper, Southwell, Notts.; Arctic Bluethroat, 

 adult male, Aberdeen, 1872 ; and two of the birds procured at 

 Cley, Norfolk, in the autumn of 1884; Alpine Chough, Oxon, 1881; 

 Alpine Swift, Finchley, i860; Egyptian Nightjar, Thieves' Wood, Notts., 

 1883 ; Squacco Heron, Notts., 1871 ; Buffle-headed Duck, adult male, 

 Bridlington, 1864-5 j Harlequin Duck, Filey, 1862 ; Sabine's Gull, 

 Bridlington, 1875 ; Ivory Gull, Aberdeen, 1874 ; Sooty Shearwater, 

 Flamborough, 1881, and Wilson's Phalarope, Sutton Ambian, Leices- 

 tershire. The presence of so many noted Yorkshire specimens will 

 always make the collection interesting to the naturalists of that county, 

 while the Egyptian Nightjar, Wilson's Phalarope, and Alpine Chough 

 are the only representatives of those species at present recorded in 

 Great Britain. The wonderful collection of abnormal varieties 

 numbers 78 species and 235 specimens, all procured in Great Britain. 

 When all are interesting it is difficult to name any particular 

 specimens, but perhaps the following may be cited as of peculiar 

 rarity: — Red-backed Shrike, pure white albino, white Sparrow Hawk, 

 white Spotted Flycatcher, white Nightingale, brown, white, and slate- 

 coloured Magpies, white, yellow and gray, and light brown and black 

 Woodcock, 'hairy' variety of the Moorhen, 'Sabine's' Snipe, sandy 

 Razor-bill, and cream-coloured Shag. The next best thing, perhaps, 

 to having a Great Auk in your collection is to have a good model, 

 and the Rainworth collection has lately been enriched with a good 

 piece of workmanship by Lee, of Thirsk, copied from the bird in the 

 York Museum. 



After lunch we continued our round of the ponds. At Bradder's 

 Dam a pair of Shovellers occupied either end ; beyond this lays the 

 Red Bog, a belt of swampy ground merging into quaking bog in 

 places, and clothed with rushes, carex, cotton grass, and with here 

 and there clumps of willow and alder, and in the drier portions wax- 

 heath, needle green-weed, and bilberry. The yellow musk of our 

 greenhouses grows in masses in parts of the bog, to all appearance 

 in a wild state ; how the seeds got there originally — for it is far from 

 any house — is unknown. At the upper end we flushed a Snipe, a 

 permanent resident here. Leaving the Triangular pond, upon which 

 were another pair of Shovellers, we crossed some arable fields and 

 turned into Harlow Wood, where among the big oaks we noticed the 

 Wood Wren. Harlow is over 300 acres, and is a remarkably fine 

 piece of woodland. Woodcock breed here, and may be seen in the 

 dusk flighting down the rides. In 1883 we examined a nesting-spot, 



Naturalist, 



