Extracts from ( Correspondence, Notices, &;c. Ill 



mination, that the whole of them (with the possible exception of 

 lolama frontalis) are known in Europe, and have nearly all been 

 previously described. 



The new edition of the ' Mammals and Birds of the United 

 States Exploring Expedition under Commodore Wilkes,' by 

 Mr. Cassin, has just been received in this country. We hope 

 hereafter to be able to give a full notice of this important work. 



XI. — Extracts from Correspondence, Notices, ^r. 

 (Plate III.) 



We are happy to be able to state that letters have been received 

 from Mr. Wallace, dated Ternate, September 2nd, announcing 

 his safe return from New Guinea about a fortnight before that 

 time. Mr. Wallace gives by no means a favourable account of 

 Havre-Dorey as a collecting-place, and says that he has never 

 made a voyage " so disagreeable, expensive, and unsatisfactory 

 as that now completed." He suflFered greatly from illness and 

 from bad and insufficient food, and was only just sufficiently 

 recovered to work at cleansing and packing his collections. His 

 servants suffered as much as himself, two or three of them were 

 always sick, and one of his hunters died of dysentery. Not only 

 was he unable to procure any of the rarer Paradise-birds himself 

 at this spot, but he could not even purchase a single skin of 

 them. "It is certain," says Mr Wallace, " that all but the two 

 common yellow species " [Paradisea apoda and P. papuana) " are 

 veiy rare, even in the places where the natives get them, for you 

 may see hundreds of the common species to perhaps one of the 

 rarer sorts. I sent two of my servants with seven natives a 

 voyage of 100 miles to the most celebrated place for birds — 

 Araberbabei — mentioned by Lesson, and after twenty days they 

 brought me back nothing but two of P. papuana and one of 

 P. regia." lie goes on to say, " My only hope now lies in 

 Waigiou, where I shall probably go next year, and try for 

 P. rubra and P. superba. Even of P. papuana I have not many, 

 as my boys had to shoot them all themselves. I got nothing 

 froui the natives at Dorey. You will ask why I did not try 

 somewhere else, when I found Dorey so bad. The simple 



