during the summer of 1863. The ornithologists,
who say they never came here before, that their
apparition is strange, mysterious, and unprecedented,
can scarcely be accused of exaggeration.
But during our last warm summer, in 1859, two
specimens of these birds were killed and recorded.
These specimens have been preserved in the
museums of Lynn and Derby. Early in July,
1859, a beautiful male, in perfect plumage, was
shot in the county of Norfolk, about two miles
from the Wash, and in the parish of Walpole
St. Peter's. This bird is preserved in the Lynn
museum, and appears to have been the first
specimen of its kind obtained in England. Gould,
Temminck, Schlegal, and Degland, indeed omit
the sand grouse from their lists of European species,
but Prince Bonaparte includes it in his Geographical
and Comparative Lists of the Birds of
Europe and North America. On the 9th of
July, 1859, a farm labourer was at work "scuffling"
turnips in a field near Tremadoc, in
Wales, when he saw three strange birds, and
being provided with a gun to shoot crows, killed
one of them. This specimen is preserved in the
Derby Museum. And now, instead of three, as
in '59, three hundred sand grouse must have
been seen in '63 in the British islands alone, and
the bird is simultaneously established both as
European and as British. An occurrence like
this has seldom happened in the circles of the
bird-wise. Yellow grouse are just now among
bird-shooters and bird-lovers, bird-namers, and
bird-stuffers, a startling novelty, an unheard-of
marvel, a nine days' wonder. In one word, the
sand grouse is the Pepper ghost or optical spectre
of ornithology.

These birds of the sunny south were first seen in
the north. They were first noticed and shot in
Scotland and the Isle of Walney, in Lancashire.
By the end of May they were pretty widely
spread. A sand grouse reached Derby from
Perth in a poulterer's hamper, undistinguished
from vulgar birds, on the 1st of June, and
another was shot as far north as Wick, in
Caithness, on the 8th of June. One was shot on
the 13th of May in the county of Durham.
Hampshire and Sussex are generally believed to
be the counties first favoured with the visits of
feathered strangers from the Continent; but
coveys of sand grouse were seen in Durham
thirteen days before they were seen in Hampshire,
and sixteen days before one was picked up
dead in Sussex from knocking its breast against
a wire of the International Telegraph. They
were everywhere in June. All have been found
on the sea-shore, or in grass fields near the
coast.

The sand grouse which I have examined, was
killed by dashing its breast against the telegraph
wires at Boxhill, in Sussex, on the 29th of May.
Here are its dimensions: From the point of the
beak to the end of the pin-tail its length is
fifteen inches; the pinnated first quills, or
primaries tapering from the shoulders to the end
of the wing, are ten inches long; the pin-tail
feathers were three and three-quarter inches
longer than the central tail feathers. The beak
was but five-eighths of an inch long, and strong
enough for nothing but picking up grains. This
bird was a hen, and less bulky than a partridge
or golden plover. The sand grouse are dove-like
about the head and neck, grouse-like about the
legs and feet, partridge-like about the beak and
breast, shearwater-like in their wings, hedgehog
or rat-like in their feet. Flying, they are
mistaken for golden plovers, and when running
they are more like rats than birds. Their footprint
is like that of a rat. My measurements
agree witli those of M. Delanoue, and not with
those of Temminck, the bird being not nine but
eleven inches long. Macgillivray deemed it very
doubtful if the species of sand grouse called
Serrhaptes or Tetrao paradoxus was a grouse at
all, or even one of the scrapers (rasores), as it
seemed to him to be much more nearly allied to
the cooers (gemitores).

Light and slender, with pin-tails and pin-
wings, the sand grouse are built for long and
swift flight over vast plains. Their inward
structure tells the same tale as their outward
locomotive machinery, for the depth of the
breast-bone or sternum is more than an inch and
an eighth; and their wings are worked by very
strong muscles.

The tail of the cock is about an inch and a
half longer than that of the hen. Yet the cock
is said to be smaller and lighter than the hen:
the cock weighing eight ounces and the hen ten.
The colour of the plumage of the sand grouse,
both male and female, is sand yellow with dark
and black bands, pencillings, and horseshoe
markings; they both have a blaze of bright orange
on both sides of their heads; while their long
tapering first wing quills and their long tapering
central tail quills are dark brown. But I have not
seen any detailed descriptions of the differences
between the cocks and hens; and there are,
indeed, some puzzling discrepancies in the
accounts of the specimens caught. The descriptions
generally apply to Pallas sand grouse, the
species made known by Pallas (Serrhaptes
paradoxus), but some of the birds have been taken
for other species, Pterocles alchata, and Pterocles
arenarius, or the band sand grouse of Temminck.
Instead of hastily and conceitedly concluding
that gentlemen fond of ornithology have mistaken
the genus, species, or names of birds they
have seen, studied, and described, it will be
wiser to wait for more information, lest it should
turn out that there have been more than one
kind in the flocks of hundreds visiting these
islands this summer. Among the birds called
sand grouse there are in the lists two species of
those with united toes—Serrhaptes; and more
than ten times as many species of pin-wings or
Pterocles.

Of Pterocles setarius of Temminck, Sir William
Jardine says: "Another interesting species is the
pin-tailed sand grouse of Temminck, a native of
Europe as well as of Africa, and the only one
which can be called really European. It is
remarkable in the lengthened form of the tail
feathers, and particularly so in a strong bill
(forming a marked contrast with the others,