of the Newcastle Museum ’ (pp. 298, 808), and afterwards in
the ‘ Zoological Journal ’ (iii. p. 497). The second specimen
was recorded in 1837, by Mr. J. C. Dale, in the ‘ Naturalist ’
(ii. p. 275), and is said to have been killed in Dorsetshire.
Soon after the time last mentioned, I was informed by
Mr. Plumptre Methuen that a specimen killed near Birmingham
was in his possession, and subsequently Mr. J. H.
Gurney sent me word that a male example had been found
dead on the beach at Yarmouth, September 21st, 1841. Mr.
Morris mentions, on the authority of Mr. E. Cole, one shot
at Margate, in September, 1842, and in September, 1844,
two specimens, one old, the other a young bird of the year,
and both then unskinned, were sent for my inspection by
Mr. Gardner. These were said to have been shot in the
Isle of Sheppey. The Strickland Collection in the Museum
of the University of Cambridge contains an example labelled
“ Britain, 1846” ; but no further particulars of its locality
are known. About September 15th, 1852, one was shot
near Whimple, in South Devon, as recorded by Lord Lilford
(Zool. p. 8709). A hen killed at Worthing, May 2nd, 1853,
is mentioned by Mr. J . W. Stephenson (Zool. p. 3907) and a
cock killed early in May, 1856, near Lowestoft (Zool. p. 5149),
is also in Mr. Gurney’s collection. Mr. Cecil Smith notices
one said to have been killed in Somerset in 1856 and now
in the Exeter Museum, and Mr. H. Pratt records (Zool.
p. 8281) a cock caught at Brighton, October 1st, 1862,
which is in Mr. Borrer’s collection. Captain Hadfield
in the ' Zoologist ’ for 1865 and the two following years,
gave a series of observations made at different times on
a Blue-tliroated Warbler wdiicli, he says, frequented a locality
in the Isle of Wight from at least February, 1865, to September,
1867, being for part of the time joined by a second.
Finally Mr. Gray has informed the Editor that a cock was
caught on board a fishing-boat off Aberdeen, May 16th, 1872.
Whether there is more than one species of Bluethroat is
a question which has been long debated and cannot yet be
deemed settled. Three forms are found, the males of which,
when in breeding-plumage, can be readily distinguished, and two
of them certainly have different breeding-grounds. The bird
named by Linnseus Motacilla suecica is characterized by him
as possessing a red spot in the middle of its blue throat,* and
seven at least of the specimens obtained in Britain—namely,
the Newcastle, Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Brighton and Aberdeen
examples, as well as that in the Strickland Collection—undoubtedly
belong to this form, which, to say nothing here of its more
eastern range, is a well-known summer-visitant to the higher
and more northern parts of Norway and Sweden. But the
majority of Bluethroats which come to the rest of Continental
Europe have a white instead of a red spot, and these
white-spotted birds, erroneously regarded by most ornithologists
as the true M. suecica, were in 1831 first distinguished
by Brehm (Handbuch, p. 358) as Pyanecula leucocyana,\
and do not ordinarily advance further north than Holland
in the west, or cross the Baltic in the east. The third form,
* This fact has been overlooked by most writers, who, while applying the epithet
suecica to the commoner inhabitant of Europe, which never visits Sweden, have
bestowed on Linnaeus's bird other specific names, as orientalis, fastuosa, inclicct,
and dichrosterna.
+ The name Sylvia cyanecula, Wolf (Taschenbuch, i. p. 240), though older, is
not distinctive, any more than is Pallas’s M. ccendecula (Zoogr. R.-A i. p. 480).