116 Letters, Amiouncenients, 6j'c. 



Turin Zoological Museum, 

 November 23rd, 1883. 

 Sirs, — I think it will interest the readers of ' The Ibis^ to 

 know that a living pair, fully adult, of the recently described 

 Struthio molybdophanes is in the aviary of Dr. Monaco, in 

 Turin. The owner bought them in Antwerp last September. 

 The female has grey feathers, like that sex of S. camelus. 



I am, Yours &c., 



T. Salvadori. 



[This supposed new species of Ostrich has, as we are 

 informed, been described in a recent number of a periodical 

 which has not yet reached this country, the principal 

 distinction, we believe, being that the naked portions of 

 the body are lead-coloured instead of red. Similar Ostriches 

 are in the Jardin d'Acclimatation at Paris, and one was 

 recently in the Zoological Society^s Gardens in the Regent's 

 park. The existence of this form has long been known to 

 us, but we should never have thought of making a "new 

 species" out of it. — Edd.] 



Topclyffe Grange, 



Faruburough, Beckenham, Kent. 



December 13, 1883. 



Sirs, — Mr. Seebohm, who, in his ' History of British 

 Birds,' complains so feelingly of the ''slipshod'' way in 

 which ornithological work has been of late done by himself 

 and others, furnishes in that book (vol. ii. p. 286, note) a 

 telling example of the truth of his complaint by his synony- 

 mical treatment of certain Shore-Larks. He prefaces his 

 remarks (which are written in the spirit that commonly 

 pervades his criticisms of the authors on whose labours his 

 own book is based) as follows: — "Dresser, in his 'Birds of 

 Europe,' has so confused the synonymy of the Asiatic species 

 and races of Shore-Larks that I have had some considerable 

 difficulty in disentangling the skein ;" and, rushing in where 

 more cautious ornithologists have feared to tread, rashly 

 identifies Gould's Otocorys louyirostiis with the small pale 

 Shore-Lark to Avhich I, in my Avork on European Birds 



