Letters, Announcements, ^c. 127 



afresh with grass and hair, and, laying four roundish white eggs, 

 begin to breed. 



This species of Pardalote I have also frequently found breed- 

 ing in the hollow boughs of the Eucalypti. P. punctatus and 

 P. melanocephalus are the only species I know of that pick out 

 for themselves holes in the ground ; having there hollowed a 

 long narrow^ chamber large enough, they line it with fine shreds 

 of stringy-bark and the like. The eggs of P. melanocephalus 

 are larger than those of any of the others; but all are white, and 

 usually ovate. 



In the last part of my " Notes on Birds breeding in the 

 neighbourhood of Sydney" (Ibis, 1865, p. 299), the paragraphs 

 headed Chelidon arborea should refer to C. ariel; and in the foot- 

 note on page 298, the word " orange " in line 5 from the bottom 

 should be "yellow." 



I am, &c., 



Edward P. Ramsay. 



28 Wellington Street, Woolwich, 

 November 18th, 1865. 

 Sir, — In the last number of ' The Ibis ' you inquire if any of 

 your readers have ever seen a Skua in the act of swimming. I 

 beg leave, in reply, to inform you that I have seen one species, 

 Stercorarius parasiticus, several times so doing, and have a spe- 

 cimen now by me which was shot while swimming in the Thames, 

 about two miles below Woolwich, in October 1864. 



I am, &c., 



H. Whitely. 



9 December, 1865. 

 Sir, — A short time since, on looking over some skins which 

 were on sale at Mr. Stevens's in Bloomsbury Street, I observed 

 an immature specimen of Hyjjotriorchis concolor, which he in- 

 formed me had been brought from the Zambesi River by Dr. 

 Kirk. As this species is not included in either of the lists of 

 the birds of that region published in ' The Ibis ' for 186i, and 

 as also I have never before seen it from any locality south of the 

 Equator, I think it well to record the fact. 



