32G 
IV. 
OX THE PLUMAGE OF THE WAX WING, 
AM PELTS GARRULUS, LINN/EUS, 
From the examination and coMrAiusoN of a large series of 
Specimens killed, in Norfolk, in the winter of I860 — 67.’^‘ 
By Henry Stevenson, F.L.S., Y.P. 
Read 2 nd Nov., i88i. 
To NaLui’alists genomlly and Ornithologists in particular the 
“ hither and whither” of this hoautiful migrant was long a source 
of interest and uncertainty; and whilst Wolley’s researches in 1856 
established the fact of its breeding in northern Europe, they 
proved, also, that this species is not less erratic in its visits to 
known breeding haunts than in its appearance in more southern 
latitudes in winter — whether in numbers limited to a few stragglers 
or to be literally counted by hundreds. 
From the winter of 1849—50, Avlicn, in the month of January 
alone, about twenty-two specimens n^ere received by the Norwich 
birdstuffers, and IMr. Edward Newman, in his summary of the 
«In a short notice in the ‘Zoologist’ for 18G7 (p. 506) of this great 
immigration of Waxwings (as regards the Norfolk coast), I stated my 
intention to publish the result of observations made on the plumage of this 
species ; but my original list of specimens, and other memoranda were, 
by a strange accident mislaid, and therefore lost to me, for several years. 
They were recovered, however, and this paper nearly completed, in time 
to be submitted to Professor Newton when writing his account of the 
Waxwing in Yarrell’s ‘British Birds’ (4th ed.). 
