Letters, Extracts from Correspondence, Notices, ^c. 389 



natural notes, from the huge Maccaws of SoutTi America and 

 greater Cockatoos of the grand Australian region, down to the 

 diminutive species of Agapornis, Psittacula, Loriculus, Melo- 

 psittacus, &c. My Andaman Kittacincla albiventris is also now 

 pouring forth his quaint and deep-toned (though rather mono- 

 tonous) whistling, as unlike the richly varied song of K. macrou- 

 rus as can well be imagined/^ 



"In a recent article in the 'Atlantic Monthly Magazine/ 

 entitled ' Then and Now in the Old Dominion,^ there are some 

 interesting notices of the early settlements in Virginia ; and the 

 author remarks, incidentally, ' On one occasion the writer, walk- 

 ing through one of these fields, startled an English Lark, which 

 rose singing and soaring skyward. It sang a theme of the olden 

 time. Governor Spottiswood brought with him, when he came, 

 a number of these Larks, and made strenuous efforts to domesti- 

 cate them in the neighbourhood of Fredericksburg, Virginia. 

 He did not succeed. Now and then we have heard of one 

 being seen companionless. It is a sad symbol of the nobler 

 being who tried to domesticate himself in Virginia — the fine old 

 English gentleman. He is now seen but little oftener than the 

 silver grass and the Lark which he brought with him.^ But 

 the Larks could not all of them have been companionless, if 

 their posterity continues to exist to the present time. The late 

 M. Audubon told me one day, in the course of conversation, that 

 he had turned out many British Skylarks in the (then) United 

 States, but that he had not heard of their multiplying. I am 

 aware that the Skylark is one of those European birds that 

 have been obtained in the Bermudas ; but there it was probably 

 a straggler from the opposite side of the Atlantic." 



" Lieut. Beavan (of the late 63rd B.N.I.) has just returned here 

 from Darjeeling, where (though chiefly on Tonglo Mountain, 

 10,000 feet, on the Nipal frontier of Sikhim, and some thirty 

 miles from Darjeeling) he has collected many good things in a 

 very short time. Of novelties, a fine new true Bullfinch {Pi/r- 

 rhula erythaca, nobis), being the fourth which the Himalaya has 

 yielded. Size of P. nipalensis, with equally furcate tail ; pectoral 

 region bright red; all the upper parts, to white rump-band, pure 

 ashy, like the back of male P. vulgaris, — a black ring, set off with 

 VOL. IV. 2 D 



