Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/45

Rh irides bright crimson lake; beak light green, yellowish at the base; it had no naked patch or shield on the forehead (possibly from its immature age); head and neck, gray; back, light olive-green; tail and tail-coverts, black; breast, bright chestnut-brown; wings, bright brown, especially the quills, which had almost a crimson tinge to them; wings, underneath, barred with black and rufous-brown (one of these feathers was enclosed); thighs, gray; vent, &c., black." Being utterly at a loss to name the bird in question, and feeling very certain that it was no European species, I sent Mr. Morres' note and the single feather to my friend Professor Newton; and here I beg to hail, as a triumph of practical Ornithology, the fact that no sooner did Mr. Salvin, who examined it with Professor Newton, see the feather and hear the description, than he at once pronounced the bird in question to be the American species, known as Aramides Cayennensis; a judgment which the two able ornithologists above named immediately verified by comparison with other specimens in the Swainson collection at Cambridge. Professor Newton adds that "as its name implies, the bird is an inhabitant of Cayenne and adjoining parts, occurring in Trinidad, but nowhere nearer (he thinks) to this country. It has been brought over several times to the Zoological Gardens, but it is most improbable that it should find its way to England unassisted; though, supposing it had made good its escape from confinement, it might perhaps continue to exist for some weeks, or even months, here, except in winter. Aramides is a rather aberrant genus of Rails, found only in the New World." Doubtless Mr. Morres and I should have been better pleased if we could have honestly considered our Wiltshire visitor as "veritable British," but after this decided opinion of Professor Newton we shall scarcely be disposed to regard the stranger as a voluntary visitor, or as one of the numerous stragglers driven over by adverse winds; we must rather look upon it as an escaped prisoner, perhaps one which has freed itself from captivity for some time, and has been wandering on and skulking from observation, after the manner of other two-legged creatures when they have managed to get outside the prison bars. I am bound, however, to say that Mr. Morres, who has made enquiry in the neighbourhood, can hear of no such escape, and says there are no marks of captivity about the bird. I may also remark that it is so far a cosmopolite as to have bred in the Jardin d'Acclimatation at Paris ('Ibis,' 3rd Series, vol. i., p. 435), and I may remind Professor Newton that in the second series of the 'Ibis,' of which he was the talented editor (vol. iv., p. 486), he speaks of this very species as "the wide ranging Aramides Cayannensis."— (Yatesbury Rectory, Calne).

(Zool. 2nd ser. 5120).—In the summer of 1875 I found several nests of the Greenfinch in some tall furze bushes situated outside the wall of a kitchen garden, and one nest— containing four young ones— was almost entirely constructed of the silky catkins of