Mr. H. Seebohm on the Birds of Natal i^c. 351 



" thoroughly revised " edition of Layard^s ' Birds of South 

 Africa.' 



Otis melanogaster is a well-known and very handsome 

 Bustard, found in various parts of South Africa, including 

 Natal. Its ochraceous-buff upper parts, marked in various 

 ways with black, scarcely differ from the tail in colour. 

 When I found that the tail is described both by Mr. Layard 

 and Mr. Sharpe as black, I naturally concluded that I had 

 met with a new species ; but since my return home I have 

 discovered that the species described by the former, and 

 retained in the " thoroughly revised " edition by the latter, 

 is Otis hartlaubi, a perfectly distinct species, with a black 

 tail, found in Abyssinia. 



Syrnium tvoodfordi is described both in the original and in 

 the thoroughly revised editions of the ' Birds of South Africa ' 

 as having " collar white with brown bars;'^ but has no collar 

 of any kind ! It is extremely puzzling to South-African 

 students to meet with so many blunders, of which these are 

 examples, in books written especially for their instruction ; 

 and it seems to me that I was fully justified in complaining 

 (Catalogue of Birds, v. p. 123) of the accustomed carelessness 

 of the writers on African ornithology. 



Both in going and returning I had many opportunities of 

 watching the large Gulls which frequent the Canary Islands 

 and Madeira. It was a very rare circumstance indeed to be 

 without half a dozen of them following in the wake of the 

 ship, and often coming within ten yards of the stern. All 

 the birds I saw were adult or nearly so, were large, with 

 yellow legs and palish mantles, and belonged unquestionably 

 to the Mediterranean form of the Herring Gull, Larus 

 argentatus cachinnans ; they certainly were neither the typical 

 L. argentatus nor L. fuscus. 



