522 
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
identified by Messrs. Saunders and Sharpe as a White Wagtail, 
which had paired with a female Pied Wagtail and produced a 
brood of hybrid young ones near Merton (Sharpe, ‘ Catalogue of 
Birds in British Museum’, pp. 4G3, 4G8), thus proving, if their 
identification be correct, that allied Wagtails cross in a state of 
nature. Lord Lilford has been so good as to inform me that in 
the spring of 1887 a White and a Pied Wagtail paired in his garden 
at Bournemouth, and that both birds were constantly within a few 
yards of him, but he did not discover the nest. The two species 
are believed to have bred together in Cumberland (see Trans. 
Cumberland and Westmoreland Assoc. 1887, p. 34). It is not 
improbable that many instances of such a conjunction may have 
hajDpened, and not been noticed owing to the similarity of the two. 
If it be admitted, as seems highly probable, that hybridism 
frequently takes place in a state of nature, the variation in a 
number of anomalous birds which at one time and another have 
puzzled collectors by their plumage would be explained away. 
It is a known fact that hybrids frequently take so closely after one 
or other of their parents as to be indistinguishable from them ; 
how impossible then it is for us to prove that such unions are not 
of frequent occurrence. — J. H. Gurnet, Jun. 
Hybrid Sparrow (between Passer montanus and P. domesticus). 
The hybrid Sparrow bred by Mr. E. Otty of Orford HiU, alluded 
to at p. 370, was exhibited by him at the meeting of the Society 
held on January 31st, and a close examination in every w^ay 
confirmed its supposed parentage, presenting as it did in its 
plumage unmistakable marks of both species. Mr. Otty stated 
that the Tree Sparrow was the male parent, and the House Sparrow 
the female: it was bred at his house in Horwich in 188G^ and 
remains in excellent health. — J. H. G., Jun. 
A New Charge against Sparrows. I have known Great Tits 
take Bees from a hive more than once, but never, until recently, 
heard that Sparrows did it. Such, however, is the case in the 
Isles of Scilly, for Mr. Vallance, the head-gardener at Trcsco 
Abbey, complained that one summer in particular he had lost a 
great many by them, and this was when an unusual amount of 
gum-honey exuded from the Aloes, for which Mr. Dorrien Smith’s 
