Letters, Announcements , 3fc. 181 



W. H. Hudson of Buenos Ayres, have all recently sent col- 

 lections to London^ which have come under our examination. 

 Besides these, M. Taczanowski, of Warsaw, has lately visited 

 this country for the purpose of comparing some of the speci- 

 mens lately collected by M. Jelski in Central Peru with our 

 named series. The result has been the determination of 23 

 new species, which were described by M. Taczanowski at a 

 recent meeting of the Zoological Society. It must be recol- 

 lected that these are additional to the new species lately de- 

 scribed by Dr. Cabanis from the same collection. It is cer- 

 tainly remarkable that a district already visited by Tschudi 

 should have yielded such novel results, and gives a good idea 

 of the richness of the Andean avifauna. 



We have now concluded a summary notice of the principal 

 events in geographical ornithology that have lately taken 

 place. We hope to be able to continue the subject in the 

 next number of ' The Ibis ' by the addition of a few remarks 

 on the monographs and works bearing on the general scope 

 of ornithology lately published or in preparation. 



XXII. — Letters, Announcements, S^c. 



The following letters, addressed " To the Editor of ' The 

 Ibis,^ ^' have been received : — 



Northrepps, Norwich, 

 January 16, 1874. 



Sir, — I obsen-e that Lieut. Legge, at p. 9 of his interesting 

 paper in the present volume of ' The Ibis,^ on the birds of 

 Southern Ceylon, refers the Spilornis inhabiting that district 

 to S. cheela, but mentions that it there " appears to average 

 smaller dimensions than in India." 



Mr. Holdsworth, on the contrary, in the P. Z. S. for 1872, 

 at p. 412, refers the Spilornis of Ceylon to S. bacha (Daudin), 

 of which S. bido (Horsfield) is a synonym. 



All the Ceylonese specimens of Sjnlornis which have come 



bEK. 111. VOL. IV. o 



