Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/73

Rh fish, apparently of the same kind, in the harbour, not two hundred yards from the window of the room in which I write, and this fine fellow did not seem to manage it a bit better than the Shag. But of all fish a large Flounder or Dab is to the Northern Diver by far the most troublesome to manage.

On the 11th December I saw another immature Black Redstart on the rocks at Stonehouse. There were two young male Goldeneyes in the Plymouth Market on the 16th, presumably obtained in the neighbourhood. Little Grebes at the same time were very plentiful in the rivers and estuaries; thirteen of the latter were seen together on the Laira, and several were brought to our birdstuffers; some of them, strange to say, still retaining traces of the breeding plumage, having the cheeks and sides of the neck strongly tinged with chesnut or bay, and the breast and belly clouded or spotted with dusky gray. During the same month some Long-eared Owls were killed in the neighbourhood of Plymouth, and several Oystercatchers were seen and shot on the Plymouth Breakwater.

 

—On the 25th December, 1876, a Weasel was caught in a rat-trap at Northrepps, Norfolk, which had both fore feet and one fore leg entirely white, also an oblong brown spot in the midst of the white of the abdomen. The Weasel not being subject to a seasonal change of colour like the Stoat, I think this variation from the normal colouring worth recording. The specimen was an exceedingly small female, weighing not quite two ounces.— (Northrepps, Norwich).

[In the second edition of Bell's 'British Quadrupeds' it is stated (p. 188) that "sometimes, though rarely, the Weasel becomes white in winter; and the tail, though paler than at other times, always retains its reddish tinge, as that of the Stoat does its black tip."—]

—Since reading the interesting paper by Mr. W.D. Crotch on the "Migration and Habits of the Norwegian Lemming" (Journal of Linnean Society, vol. xiii. No. 65, p. 83), it strikes me that there is just a possibility that this interesting little animal may be found to inhabit the mountains in the northern parts of Newfoundland. It is, I believe, indisputably proved that the Lemming is an inhabitant of Greenland: then why not Newfoundland? I know of no other species of the Arvicolæ, or even of the Muridæ, which makes such 