392 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
“ Field ” newspaper three instances are given of domestic Fowls 
laying eggs (Vide the “Field,” Nov. 1st, 1884, Aug. 21st, and 
Sept. 4th, 188G), these Fowls having assumed male plumage 
jireviously ; in one case young birds were hatched, in the others 
the eggs were not fertile. To make my remarks correct, readers 
must insert the word imialbj” in the 21st line. For such a 
female Fowl to produce chickens must, however, he extremely rare, 
for Dr. Tegetmeier tells me that in the whole of his long 
.experience, he has never known a case ; and it is apparently very 
uncommon for any Gallinaceous bird which has assumed the male 
plumage even to lay eggs, — much less produce young. 
J. II. Gurney, Jun. 
Occurrence of the Serin Finch at Yarmouth. A Serin 
Finch, Serinus hortidanus, of LinnaBUs, was netted by a bird- 
catcher on the North Denes at Yarmouth, on the 5th February, 
1887, and was brought to me, by Mr. Cole, in the flesh on the 
8th, having been kept alive at Yarmouth for two or three days. 
It proved to be a male bird on dissection. This diminutive Finch, 
whose habitat is Southern Europe and North Africa, has occurred 
several times in England, and, as may naturally be supposed? 
chiefly on the south coast, and as Professor Newton remarks in the 
fourth edition of Yarrell’s ‘British Bi^ds,’ the Serin has, of late 
years, been observed to be extending its range on the Continent, 
and might well be expected to occur in England. Mr. Newton 
records eleven specimens as having been met with in this country, 
the earliest identified, a male, caught near Portsmouth, in April, 
1852. Of these eleven specimens, seven were taken near Brighton, 
one near Portsmouth, one at Worthing, one in Somersetshire, and 
one near London, recorded by Mr. Bond. The present example, 
though the first that has come under my notice in Norfolk, is not, 
I believe, the first identified as having occurred in this county, as 
Mr. J. TI. Gurney, Junr., in the addenda to his list of Norfolk 
birds contributed to Mason’s ‘ History of Norfolk,’ states that 
Mr. G. Smith, of Yarmouth, informed him that a male Serin Avas 
shot in a garden on the outskirts of Yarmouth on Juno 13th, 1885, 
and is now in the collection of Mr. li. W. Chase, of Birmingham. 
11. Stevenson. 
