Letters, Extracts from Correspondence, Notices, &;c. 309 



edited by Mr. Alfred Newton, and will form a Catalogue of the 

 collection as now in the possession of the gentleman last men- 

 tioned. This work, the ' Ootheca Wolleyana,^ cannot fail to prove 

 of great interest to all naturalists, and will, we hope, make its 

 appearance in the course of a twelvemonth. 



"With reference to INIr. Powys's mention of the Owls in Anda- 

 lusia {Scops zorca and Strix flammea) going into the churches 

 and drinking the holy oil (Ibis, ii. p. 134), Mr. J. H. Gurney 

 remarks that Senor K,. Montes de Oca, who was the collector 

 of a line series of birds in Southern Mexico (described in P.Z. S. 

 1859, p. 362), told him the same story of Syrnium zonocercum 

 — a common species in that country — and stated that, besides 

 entering churches after the oil, it frequented factories, where it 

 was said to get oil from the machinery ! Is this a fact, or a 

 Spanish notion imported into the New World by the settlers of 

 that nation ? 



In a recent letter from Washington, Prof. S. F. Baird, of the 

 Soiithsonian Institution, mentions the discovery by Mr. Xantus 

 (who is continuing his researches at Cape S. Lucas, the southern 

 extremity of the Lower Californian peninsula) of a new Humming- 

 bird of the genus Amazilia^. 



From Professor S. F. Baird we also learn that great efforts are 

 being made to promote the study of Oology in America. There 

 were no less than six Northern expeditions planned to be executed 

 during the present season, from all of which he had expectation 

 of eggs. 



1. Mr. Kennicott spends his season on Great Slave Lake, at 



* Mr. Gould has just received specimens of this bird, and of three other 

 Trochilidce recently described by Mr. G. N. Lawrence of New York. The 

 'Amuzilia (which bears attached to it the name A. xantusi) is evidently the 

 female of a species of Hellopcedica, the male of which (from Southern 

 California) has been named by Mr. Lawrence Heliopcedica castaneo-cauda. 

 The sjiecics is new, and one of great interest, being a strict congener of 

 //. tnelanotis of Mexico and Central Araerica*. The second of the birds de- 

 scribed by Mr. Lawrence is a Bogota skin, hardly diflferent from the ordi- 

 nary Heliomaster longirostris, which he has proposed to call H. stuarticc ; 

 and the third — the type of his Mellisuga merrittii — is, as Mr. Gould be- 

 lieves, the female of Clais guimeti. The latter is from Vcragua. — Ed. 



