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



found in any museum, with the exception of the British, in the 

 United Kingdom ; and we trust that the University authorities 

 will lose no time in contriving that they shall be available for 

 consultation and study by ornithologists generally. We learn 

 also, by the last Annual Report of the Yorkshire Philosophical 

 Society, that the collection of British Birds formed by the late 

 Arthur Strickland has been presented to the Society's Museum. 

 This collection contains many interesting specimens, among 

 them Ardea alba and Puffinus major, killed in England, to say 

 nothing of a fine Alca impennis, of which last the Society already 

 possessed a very fair example. 



We have received from a friend who is well qualified to speak 

 with certainty on the subject, the information that the Tarsiger 

 cucuUatus, Gould, described by Mr. Blyth in our pages a short 

 time since [supra, p. 16, note) is a species figured by Levaillant 

 (Ois. d'Afr. pi. 157), and now known as Pogonocichla stellata 

 (Vieill.). In 1850 it received another name from Pi-of. Sunde- 

 vall, that of P. maryaritata, as we learn from that naturalist 

 himself in his critical remarks on Levaillant's work. 



Mr. Swinhoe, from whom a long and interesting communica- 

 tion is unavoidably postponed to our next number, has recently 

 informed us of the much-to-be-lamented death, at Hongkong, 

 of Professor De Filippi, at the the age of fifty-three. This 

 enterprising naturalist, whose travels in Persia we only a few 

 months since had to record (Ibis, 1866, p. 414), sailed in the 

 Italian frigate * Magenta,' as the head of a scientific mission, on 

 a voyage round the world, and had successfully reached China 

 on his way to Australia. It is a satisfaction to know that our 

 contributor, Signor Giglioli, so well known to many Englishmen 

 from his residence some years since in London, also accompanied 

 the expedition ; so that our branch of science will be well taken 

 care of. Professor De Filippi is said to have been deservedly 

 popular among his own countrymen ; and it is greatly to be re- 

 gretted that a naturalist so able should have fallen a victim to 

 the notoriously treacherous climate of our Chinese possession. 



