Letters, Announcements, ^c. 187 



really travel by post all the way from Andai to Berlin ?) The 

 supposed new hyxl is obviously the same as Drepanornis al- 

 bertisi, discovered by d^Albertis at Atam, in the Arfak moun- 

 tains in September 1872^ received in London on June \7, 

 1873, and described the same evening at the Zoological So- 

 ciety's meeting"^. Now when Dr. A. B. Meyer arrived in 

 Vienna in October last, he wrote to me for information con- 

 cerning this bird, and I immediately sent him a copy of the 

 article in ' Nature ' in which it is described and figured. He 

 had therefore ample time to have cancelled his redescription 

 sent to the ' Journal fiir Ornithologie/ and ought to have done 

 so. Its appearance at this late date, without reference to 

 D'Albertis's discovery, requires explanation, failing which it 

 can only be regarded as an attempt to obtain an unfair 

 priority. 



I also learn from Hr. J. v. Rosenberg, the distinguished 

 Dutch traveller, that in April 1871 he saw a single female 

 specimen of this same Paradise-bird in the collection of Mr. 

 D. van Duivenbode, Jr., at Temate, and had proposed to call 

 it Ephnachus veithii, in a work on his travels in the Eastern 

 Archipelago, which is now in preparation. It is singular that 

 three travellers should have all so nearly at the same time 

 met with traces of this hitherto unknown species. 



Signor L. M. d'Albertis has just passed through London 

 on his return to Genoa from Sydney, via Levuka, Honolulu, and 

 San Francisco. He has left his extensive collections here, 

 and will shortly retui'u to work them out. He tells us that 

 Orangerie Bayf, where the native skins of the new Paradisea 

 raggiana were obtained, is not near Salawatty, as I had sup- 

 posed, but at the extreme S.W, point of New Guinea, in 

 the district lately visited by H.M.S. 'Basilisk.' This point 

 is of great interest, as showing that each part of Papua has 

 its peculiar form of Paradisea. 



Signor d'Albertis, we are glad to say, gives us a good ac- 



* See ' Nature,' viii. p. 306 (August 14tli), and P. Z. S. 1873, p. 560, 

 pi. xlvii. 



t Not Arangesia, as misprinted by Mr. Elliot in his Monograph of 

 the Paradise-birds. 



