Letters, Extracts, Notices, &^c. 367 



his notes is astonishing, and makes one imagine the sound to 

 be produced by human agency. On one occasion, after 

 this, I was utterly deceived, being out in the woods. I felt 

 certain of being far from all my companions and other human 

 beings, when I suddenly stopped, hearing, as I thought, some- 

 one with a knowledge of music whistling charmingly and 

 clearly quite close to me. But I suddenly remembered the 

 Flautero, and espied my little friend singing his song, which 

 ended on the key-note. He is a very insignificant-looking 

 little greyish-coloured bird, and, I was informed, always 

 dies in captivity. He dances and performs strange antics 

 before the female during his song.^' 



Structure of the Penguins. — We wish to call the special 

 attention of ornithologists to the beautiful specimen illus- 

 trative of the wing of the Penguins which has been recently 

 added to the series of bird-structures now being prepared, 

 under Prof. Flower^s superintendence, for the entrance-hall of 

 the British Museum of Natural History. It is quite evident 

 that while the Struthiones (at any rate the Ostrich and Rhea) 

 do not materially diverge from the great mass of birds in 

 the arrangement of their wing-feathers, and may, so far as 

 this point goes, be the degenerate descendants of forms that 

 once had wings more or less available for flight, the Penguins, 

 in their wing-structure, as in their foot-structure, must be 

 held to belong to quite a difl"erent category. It is impossible 

 to suppose that the ancestors of the Penguins ever had normal 

 wings, so totally diverse is the arrangement of their wing- 

 feathers. The Impennes, in fact, as has been already hinted 

 (Ibis, 1886, p. 212), must be regarded as one of the lowest, 

 if not absolutely the least developed, types of ornithic life, 

 and should be kept in any natural arrangement completely 

 separate from the normal series, — P. L. S. 



Habits of the Oxpecker. — In a letter addressed to Lord Wal- 

 singham, dated River Lumi, between Tavuta and Rombo 

 (Kilimandjaro district of East Africa), Mr. Frederick J. 



