116 Letters, Announcements, S^c. 



tinge, and in the pale nearly white centre of the breast and 

 throat. 



(3) Proparus dubius, Hume, I have compared with ten ex- 

 amples, and find very close to Minla mandellii, Godw.-Aust.; 

 but it is white beneath, and wants the streaked white-and- 

 black feathers behind the ear-coverts, is smaller, more rufous, 

 and less striate on the head. In my opinion it is a good 

 representative race, in the far south, of the Assam form. It is 

 a true Minla in every respect. In the same way Minla casta- 

 niceps, from Teuasserim, is paler below than the specimens 

 from the Assam hills. Both these local races exhibit a 

 variation equal in kind and degree, which is very interesting. 



(4) Mi?ila rufo(/ularis,Msind., = Alcippe collaris, Walden. 

 I have compared it with a large series of the latter ; rufo- 

 gularis has priority as the title. Minla mandellii is quite a 

 different bird, and cannot be confounded with it. Its correct 

 generic title is Minla. — H. H. G.-A. 



We have also received the six subjoined letters : — 



Boston, November 13, 1877. 



Sirs, — My young townsman, Dr. James C. Merrill, U.S.A., 

 stationed at Fort Brown, Texas, continues to make interesting 

 discoveries in this border region. Among these are the eggs 

 of Molothrus aneus, which you wiU find desciibed in full in 

 the ' Nuttall ' for October. They are greenish white, and so 

 far are found only in nests with eggs of a similar colour"^. 



He found last smnmer a colony of Ibis guarauna breeding 

 in the swamps at the mouth of the Rio Grande. What he 

 supposed to be Panda americana proves to be P. pitiayumi, 

 a new bird to our already plethoric fauna. Neocorys spraguei, 

 has been taken near Fort Brown (its most southern and 

 eastern record) . 



In September last Dr. Merrill found a nest which, there 

 is little doubt, belonged to a pair of Amazilia cerviniventris 

 inside the enclosure of Fort Brown. ''It was in the fork 



* [See Robert Owen's account of the eggs of this bird, 'Ibis,' 1861, 

 p. 61,— Edd.] 



