214 Letters, Eoctracts from Correspondence, Notices, ^-c. 



ably muscular.' lu the same work (p. 180) I remarked of the 

 Falcunculi, that ' they are nearly Tits, with a somewhat Shrike- 

 like bill, and resemble our common Pari in their manners, 

 notes, nidification, eggs, and plumage.' Others have since come 

 over to the same opinion. 



"In my Catalogue of the specimens of Stuffed Birds in the 

 Asiatic Society's Museum, Calcutta (1852), I placed Panurus 

 at the tail of the FringilUdoi (p. 134), under the heading of 

 ' Incerta sedis.' 



" Permit me further to inform you that our late most sin- 

 cerely lamented friend William Yarrell was about to perpe- 

 trate, through his artist, a most thoroughly detestable figure 

 of Panurus biar-micus, carefully and minutely copied from a 

 villainously stuffed specimen, when I happened to call upon 

 him just in the very nick of time, and gave him an off-hand 

 sketch of about the genuine outline, which appears (in his third 

 edition) in vol. i. p. 406 : only the tail is not quite long enough, 

 nor the tarsi ; and that shadow of a shade of the moustache is, 

 of course, a mistake, such as non-naturalist artists are so ex- 

 tremely prone to indulge in. 



" Of course you know that the late Prince Bonaparte described 

 a second race of the Panurus genus from Kamtschatka, in one of 

 his papers in the ' Comptes Rendus' — about such a form as our 

 friend Charles Darwin would designate an ' incipient ' species. 



" I observe in p. 353 that Mr. Powys remarks of the Gadwall 

 Duck, that it is ' by far the best for the table of the European 

 AnotidceJ I have digested several Gadwalls this season, and I 

 don't think that he is very far from wrong ; but the best of all 

 the Duck tribe, so far as my experience goes, is decidedly Fuli- 

 gula rufina. Much, of course, depends upon the cookery : too 

 often, as the poet tells us, ' cooks come from t'other place ! ' 

 But a fine fleshy Red-crested Pochard, just done to a turn, and 

 not overdone, must be equal to the finest ' Canvas-back ' that 

 ever was roasted. To say the least, I cannot conceive the possi- 

 bility of anything of the sort being finer ! I undoubtedly am a 

 bit of an epicure in a quiet way, and have just been feasting off 

 Glossy Ibis. Take my word for it, a roasted Falcinellus iyneiis 

 is anything but contemptible fare. 



