Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 119 



met with by Mr. F. Ober in Grenada, and gives a nominal list 

 of the whole of them. Specimens of most of those obtained 

 by Mr. Wells have been sent to the Smithsonian Institution, 

 Washington, and have been determined by Mr. Lawrence. 



XI. — Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 



We have received the following letters addressed to the 

 Editors of 'The Ibis:'— 



Sirs, — I beg leave to send you a short note on the proper 

 generic name for the Nightingales. 



The following generic names have been proposed for these 

 birds : — 



Luscinia, Brehm, Isis, 1828, p. 1280. 



DauUas, Boie, Isis, 1831, p. 542. 



Philomela, Selby, Brit. Orn. i. p. 206 (1833). 



Lusciola, Keys. & Bias. Wirbelth. Eur. p. Iviii (1840). 



Although Luscinia has the priority, still, even in one of 

 the most recent works {' A List of British Birds, compiled by a 

 Committee of the British Ornithologists' Union,' p. 11), the 

 genus DauUas, Boie, has been used for the Nightingales, but, 

 according to my view, not quite correctly. Both Luscinia, 

 Brehm, and DauUas, Boie, were published by their authors 

 without characters ; but while Luscinia has been accepted 

 and characterized by G. R. Gray, in the ' Genera of Birds,' 

 i. p. 173, since 1818, and accepted also by Cabanis (Mus. 

 Hein. i. p. 1) and others, DauUas was revived much later by 

 Dr. Sclater (' Revised List of the Vertebrate Animals in the 

 Gardens of the Zoological Society,' p. 126), in 1872, and first 

 characterized nearly at the same time, or very shortly after- 

 wards, by Prof. Newton {' Yarrell's British Birds,' i. p. 312)"^. 

 From all this it is quite evident that Luscinia, Brehm, 



* Strickland, in 1841 (Ann. & Mag. N. H. vi. p. 422), thinking that 

 Luscinia had been first used generically by Bonaparte in 1838, wrote 

 that it "should give way to Philomela, Selby, 1833, unless DauUas, 



