MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND ODSERVATIONS. 
65'J 
middle toe and claw, 2\ inches; inner toe and claw, lj: inches; 
outer toe and claw, 1 j* inches. 
On dissection the sex proved to he a female; ovary, rather small 
and nearly black in colour, and showing no particular development 
of the eggs ; from the appearance it presented I should imagine it 
to he a barren bird, the ovary having the same appearance as that 
of a female pheasant when assuming the plumage of the 
opposite sex. 
Since writing the above it may be of interest to add that the 
female Great Bustard, so many years preserved at Biddies worth 
Hall, and killed at Cavenham, in Sulfolk, see ‘Birds of Norfolk,’ 
vol ii. p. .'17, was sold by auction on the Gth of April, 181)4, and 
fetched the sum of <£46. — T. E. Gunn. 
Occurrence op the Tropic Bird in England. Professor 
Newton states that occasionally, perhaps through violent storms, 
Tropic Birds ( Phaeton , Linn.) wander very far from their 
proper haunts, which, as their name implies, are the Southern 
Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. A case instancing the 
justice of his remarks, is that of the specimen here depicted 
( Phaiton nt/iereus), which was picked up dead at Bradley, near 
Malvern, in Herefordshire, forty years ago, on the farm of a 
Mr. Yapp. It was for many years in the possession of the late 
Mr. John Walcott, of Worcester, and from him passed to 
Mr. W. II. Heaton, of Keigate, who kindly permitted the present 
writer to acquire it. 
.Some further account of this interesting waif will he found in 
Mr. Edwin Lee’s “ Birds of the Malvern District,” in the 
‘Transactions of the Malvern Naturalists’ Field Club,’ reprinted 
with Notes by E. Newman, in the ‘Zoologist,’ 1871, p. 2G66, and 
additional comments thereon, ‘Zoologist,’ 187G, p. 47GG. The 
evidence tends to show that we have a genuine case of a wanderer, 
borne, as Professor Newton suggests, by weather disturbance to 
the soil of England ; nor is this the only occurrence, for Leigh, 
in his ‘Natural History of Lancashire’ (1700), describes another, 
“ found dead on the sea coast,” and gives a figure copied from 
Willoughby. 
Professor Newton, in the ‘ Encyclopaedia liritannica,’ cites both 
these instances, and another at Heligoland, remarking that “these 
