Letters, Extracts frutn Correspondence, Notices, &;c. 193 



until the end of December. His last letters (dated Panama, 

 Jan. 6th & 15th) announced that he purposed leaving by the 

 Central American mail of the 18th of that month to join Mr. 

 Salvin in Guatemala. 



Mr. Blyth in his last letters (dated Calcutta, Jan. 8th & 21st) 

 speaks of an apparently new species of Cassowary {Casuarius) in 

 the aviary of the Babu Rajendra MuUick of Calcutta : " It has 

 a yellow throat, a single yellow throat-wattle, and a long stripe 

 of naked yellow skin down each side of the neck. In its pre- 

 sent (first) plumage, it is of a much lighter colour than the 

 young of the Common Cassowary of the same size, two of which 

 are kept along with it ; and from the size of the legs, it is easy to 

 perceive that when full-grown it is a much smaller species." 



The following extracts are from Mr. Osbert Salvin^s last 

 letters : — 



" San Geronimo, Vera Paz, 

 Nov. 29th, 1859. 



" The day before yesterday I arrived here from Coban, having 

 spent three weeks there altogether, during the whole of which 

 time I was kept hard at work skinning. The whole number of 

 skins I obtained reaches to 600, of which I prepared myself 

 about 400. They were all shot near the town by the boys with 

 their pea-shooters, and so dexterous are some of these young 

 rascals, that they would, in one day, sometimes, bring me as 

 many as fifty. I paid them at the rate of \^d. a piece, but for 

 larger birds, according to their size. I cannot now give you an 

 exact summary of the collection, but I will just run through 

 some of the best. In the first place, I found a man who had, 

 among some common things, three Cotingce amabiles, which of 

 course I secured. If what they tell me is true, it would appear 

 that this species makes a vertical migration, and is found in the 

 summits of the hills about Coban during the months of January, 

 February, and March ; the other months it spends on the 'tierra 

 calicntc.^ The skins 1 have just obtained are from the latter 

 locality. Of Huunning-birds I obtained sixteen species, one of 



