Letters, Extracts from Correspondence, Notices, ^c. 391 



some additional interesting particulars. On August 14tli the 

 keeper was out with his gun in a fallow-field, when he heard a 

 low whistle, which for some weeks previous he had heard near 

 his cottage in the evening. Presently two birds got up and 

 came (to use his own words) straight towards him, like light- 

 ning. He fired, and both birds fell. He picked up one, an 

 adult male, which came into my possession. The female dropped 

 in a hollow, and he could not find it. It was afterwards picked 

 up by some children, in whose hands the keeper saw it ; but it 

 had been so pulled about that it was fit for nothing, and it was 

 finally plucked, cooked, and eaten by their mother. It may be 

 interesting to some of your readers to hear that two specimens 

 of the Cirl Bunting [Emheriza cirlus) were caught in a net by 

 a friend of mine, last winter, at Pitstone, Bucks, the adjoining 

 parish to Tringhoe : one of them unfortunately got thrown away, 

 as my friend did not know what it was ; but the other is in my 

 possession. I have little doubt that this bird breeds in the 

 neighbourhood, as in May 1861 I saw a fine adult male in the 

 parish of Albury, which is adjacent to both Pitstone and Tring- 

 hoe. " H. Harpur Crewe." 

 "The Rectory, Drayton Beauchamp, Tring, Sept. 9, 1862," 



With great regret we have to record a fresh addition to the 

 already long list of martyrs to the cause of science — that of a 

 naturalist whose explorations have been several times noticed in 

 these pages. Sir R. Schomburgk sends the following notice to 

 the ' Athenaeum,' April 31st : — " Information has just been 

 received at Bangkok of the death of M. Mouhot de Montbeliard, 

 a French traveller and naturalist, who fell a victim to the jungle 

 fever in November last, at the confines of Tonquin. M. Mouhot 

 arrived in Bangkok in 1858, encouraged in his travels by some 

 lovers of natural history in England, and accounts of the new 

 discoveries which he has made have been frequently read before 

 the Zoological Society in London. He was a fair draughtsman ; 

 and as his collections have been taken care of by the Siamese 

 authorities where he died, and are now daily expected in Bangkok, 

 under the charge of his servants, it is to be hoped that his 

 manuscripts and drawings are likewise safe. In his personal 



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