Letters, Announcements, ^c. 2.39 



of our Indian and other naturalists in Central Asia. A 

 translation of liis remarks on the birds of the Pamir region, 

 with notes by Mr. Seebohm, was published in ' The Ibis ' for 

 1883. On his estate at Petrovskoe, in the Government of 

 Voroneje, Severtzoff had been engaged for the last four 

 years in arranging and elaborating his materials, when the 

 catastrophe came which ended his life. On the evening of 

 the 8th of February, when driving in a carriage along with a 

 friend on a beaten track on the frozen river Ikorts, a tribu- 

 tary of the Don, the carriage was suddenly plunged into the 

 water owing to an unperceived rotten place in the ice, but all 

 managed to extricate themselves. His friend urged him to 

 make for the nearest house ; but Severtzoff delayed, exclaim- 

 ing "Whereas my portfolio?^' walked a few steps, and fell 

 down in a fit ; the driver was frozen to death a few minutes 

 later. With that sublime British ignorance of the climate 

 of South Russia which sent many of our soldiers to the 

 Crimea with an equipment suitable for the tropics, a 

 leading journal has stated that Severtzoff was " drowned 

 while hatJmig in the Don.'"' 



With regret we record the premature death, at Philadelphia, 

 U.S.A., on the 29th November last, of Mr. Ernest William 

 White, F.Z.S., for some time resident in Buenos Ayrcs, 

 Mr. White was well known to many of us as an energetic 

 traveller in the Argentine Republic and as a collector of its 

 Birds ; he was also author of a work on that country, 

 entitled ' Cameos from the Silverland,' and of several j)apers 

 in the ' Proceedings ' of the Zoological Society of London. 



The late Mr. E. C. Rye, who succumbed to an attack of 

 small-pox on the 7th of February, was not nominally an 

 ornithologist ; but his attainments as a practical naturalist 

 demand a few words of recognition even in a Journal, like the 

 present, devoted to a special subject. Although principally an 

 entomologist, it would have been impossible for any one to 

 have edited the ' Zoological Record ' during eleven years as 

 he did, with singular ability, without having a considerable 



