328 
sea-board, from the extreme western shores of the Wash to 
Yarmouth and Lowestoft on the east, became gradually dispersed, 
and when more and more sought after, as their arrival became 
known, the same localities which supplied the earlier specimens 
afforded others, later on, when further explored. 
It would be useless here to give the locality of each specimen, 
as entered in my note-book, since local readers only would be able 
to distinguish places on the coast from those inland ; but I may 
state generally that, of the 144 birds included in the list appended 
to this paper, over 100 were killed either immediately on the coast, 
or within five or six miles, as the crow flies j the remainder in 
various inland localities, even those most remote from the sea. 
Of the coast .specimens, the chief proportion were obtained in the 
neighbourhood of Lynn, Cromer, and Yarmouth. 
So rarely does an opportunity occur of examining and comparing, 
in a fresh state, a large series of these interesting birds, that I 
gladly availed myself of the numbers sent to our birdstuffers to note 
their differences of plumage, and, if possible, detect any external 
distinctions between males and females. Upwards of sixty 
examples thus passed through my hands, of ■which forty-one 
were brought to Mr. T. E. Gunn, of this city, to bo stuffed j and as 
these were all carefully dissected, as they came in, and daily 
memoranda made as to sex, number of wax-tips, and other special 
features, the following statistics may be fully relied upon, as they 
apply only to such examples as I then saw ; all those of which 
merely the date was communicated to mo by correspondents being 
left blank under other headings. 
I should here state, also, as I may have further occasion to refer 
to it, that Mr. Gunn kept a list as well as myself, which, with 
remarks from his own observations, at the time, was published in 
the Huddersfield ‘Naturalist’ for 18G7 (pp. 163 — GG, and 1 13 1 1 ). 
Notes on Sex and Plumage. 
Of sixty-eight dissected specimens, forty-one proved to bo males, 
and twenty-seven females, and as Yarrell states*' with regard to 
*This is, of course, altered in Professor Newton’s fourth edition of 
Yarrcll’s ‘ British Birds.’ See vol. i. p. .Gat, foot-note. 
