Letters, Announcements, ifc. 247 



find the new Doctor speaking of " claviculse avium, quae etiam 

 ossa co}-acoidea nominari solent ; " for we had thought it was now 

 universally recognized that in birds the furcula, and not the 

 coracoids, represented the clavicles. The author gives a list of 

 the species (115 in number) whose sternums he has closely ex- 

 amined. A lai'ge proportion of them are American, and among 

 them we find that not at all common bird Ictinia mississippiensis ; 

 but there is a great lack of the forms which deviate most from 

 the ordinary rule, such, for instance, as occur among the Picarice 

 and Grallts ; and it is probably from this cause that Dr. Dieck 

 abstains from stating what his views are on the general clas- 

 sification of birds. 



5. American. 

 Mr. Lawrence in the 'Annals' of the New York Lyceum for 

 December last, describes as new six species of Birds — 

 Hirundo cequatorialis from Ecuador, ThamnophiliLS leucopygus 

 and Empidonax pectoralis from the Isthmus of Panama, and three 

 Humming-birds. To Mr. Gould we are indebted for the in- 

 formation that he has received from Mr. Lawrence the types of 

 these last, that Helioduxa henryi is identical with H. jacula, that 

 Thaumatias viridicaudus is the female of Chrysuronia humboldti, 

 and that Amazilia [Pyrrhophcead) graysoni differs only in size 

 from P. cinnamomea. 



In our notice in the last ' Ibis ' of Dr. Coues's paper on the 

 ornithology of Arizona {supra, pp. 130, 131) we omitted to 

 mention, as we ought to have done, that the bird referred with 

 doubt by that gentleman in our own pages (Ibis, 1865, p. 164) 

 to Vireo solitarius is his new V. plumbeus, and that spoken of 

 by him in the same interesting article (p. 165) as being either 

 Melospiza melodia or M. heermanni proves to be M. fallax. 



XV. — Letters, Announcements, S^c. 



The following letters, addressed "To the Editor of 'The Ibis,'" 



have been received : — 



Kustendjie, Bulgaria, 1866. 



Sir, — The claims of Aquila ncevioides to a place among the 



birds of Europe have several times been urged in ' The Ibis.' 



