Letters, Extracts, Announcements, ^c. 181 



I grant that the bills of the Fringillidse are often a variable 

 quantity; but here we have the case of a genus which, 

 like Myiagra and Ptilopus, seems to vary in every Pacific 

 group ; and it would be^ a priori, most improbable and con- 

 trary to analogy that identical species should be found so 

 far apart as Batchian &c. on the one side and New Caledonia 

 on the other^ though we should expect a blue-masked species 

 there, just as we now find a red-masked species in New He- 

 brides, nearer to the red-masked types o£ Fiji and Samoa. 

 I trust therefore that E. cyanifrons may not be so pitilessly 

 put out of existence. 



Yours &c,, 



H. B. Tristram. 



Newcastle, Natal, 



3rd November, 1881. 



Sirs, — I am happy to be able to tell you that, though 

 prevented by political motives from prosecuting any further 

 operations against the Boers, some of us are hard at work in 

 these parts in a campaign against the birds, and have, I hope, 

 collected between us a respectable amount of specimens and 

 information concerning them. 



Capt. E. A. Butler, Royal Irish Rifles, Capt. H. W. Feilden, 

 6th Dragoons, and myself are all quartered here, and are 

 working together with a view to the compilation of a joint 

 " Contribution to the Ornithology of Natal," which we hope 

 will see the light in a future number of '^The Ibis.' 



Newcastle is not a good station for the collector, there 

 being but little bush and but few scattered " vleys " or 

 marshes ; but we have now somewhere about 180 species on 

 record, and hope to make this up to 200 before we leave, with 

 the additional kinds we may meet with on the march down 

 to Durban. 



Yours &c., 



Savile G. Reid, Capt. R.E. 



5 East View, Hyde Park, Leeds, 

 December 3rd, 1881. 

 Sirs, — The second occurrence in the British Isles of 



