184 
SYLVIAM. 
been shot, either on that or the preceding day. These are the 
only instances known to me of its occurrence in the neighbour- 
hood. When at Shane's Castle Park, on the 30th of July, 1839, 
accompanied by Mr. Selby and the Rev. Edw. Bigge (of Merton 
College, Oxford) the song of a bird which I had not before heard, 
attracted me ; and the attention of the former gentleman being 
called to it, he stated it to be unquestionably that of the black-cap, 
with which he was quite familiar : the bird was on the south bank 
of the river Main, near its junction with Lough Neagh. On the 
following day we heard the song of another repeated for a long 
time in Massareene Park, on the opposite side of the lake ; the 
bird was in underwood contiguous to a small garden. Neither 
songster was seen. 
A male black-cap was shot in the first week of December, 1833, 
near Dublin. About the middle of May, 1844, a pair was 
was seen among the underwood of the Zoological Garden, Phoenix 
Park, where in a previous year one bird had been observed. At 
another and distant part of this very extensive park, the blackcap 
has been met with in different years. Two of these birds were 
shot in December, 1843, (one of them on the 23rd of the month,) 
by Mr. R. J. Montgomery, at the Manor House, Raheny, near 
Dublin. At Donnybrook, too, near the metropolis, the black-cap 
was obtained, in the month of October, 1846; and at Rath- 
farnham, in the same county, one of these birds was killed in 
the last week of January, 1847. One, procured at the vale of 
Avoca, county of Wicklow, on the 23rd of May, 1837, came 
under my inspection in Dublin ; and it was stated that a few 
more had been seen at the same time. 
The collection of Mr. R. Davis, junr., of Clonmel, contains 
a black-cap killed in that neighbourhood on the 27th of Decem- 
ber, 1834; it was, when shot, accompanied by five or six others. 
The late Mr. Henry Pennell of Ballibrado, county of Tipperary, 
met with the black-cap breeding there in different years, and pro- 
cured specimens of the adult and young birds ; also of the eggs. 
A coloured drawing of a bird shot on the 9th of October, 1830, 
near the town of Waterford, and kindly sent thence for my in- 
