Tetters, Extracts, Notices, !^c. 399 



at least a young bird of Oriohis larvutus iu the Turin Museum 

 has the bill uniformly black. 



Moreover Fiasch and Hartlaub, in their work ' Die Vogel 

 Ost-Afrikas/ describe the bill of the young 0. larvutus and 

 O. monachus (pp. 293, 294) as black (in the dry skin) . 



As to Sporaginthus margarita Weld-Blundeil and Lovat, 

 Bull. B. O. C. vol. X. p. XX (1899) ; Ogilvie Grant, Ibis, 1900, 

 p. 130, pi. iii. fig. 1, it agrees very well with the types of my 

 Estrilda uchrogaster from Abyssinia (Boll. Mus. Tor. no. 287, 

 p. 4, 1897). On comparing my birds with the figure, the 

 only difference seems to be in the greater brightness of the 

 ochreous colour of the underparts shown in the plate, which 

 is probably due to the eolorist. 



Yours &c., 



Turin Zool. Mus. T. SalVADORI. 



Januarv ]900. 



Sirs, — Having received a living specimen of the rare Ross^s 

 Snow-Goose {Chen rossi) of Arctic America (which is quite 

 different from C. hyperhoreus and its allies), I have compared 

 the descriptions given of the soft parts of this bird in the 

 Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum (xxvi. p. 88), and 

 elsewhere, with my specimen. These descriptions are not 

 accurate, having been, no doubt, taken from dry skins, 

 and 1 think it may be of interest to state the particulars 

 correctly, which are as follows : — 



Bill comparatively a little shorter than in Chen hgper- 

 boreus. The commissure opens nearly, if perhaps not quite so 

 much, as in Chen hyperboreus, and encloses a distinctly black 

 space, as in the larger species; this black is most intense in 

 the upper mandible and in the upper inner part of the lower 

 mandible. In the swollen outside surface of the lower man- 

 dible the black ends in vertical lines, with bluish flesh-coloured 

 divisions between them. Between the vertical line formed by 

 the end of the feathering on the sides of the upper mandible 

 and the nostrils extends an olive-greenish-grey space, in 

 which the skin is marked with more or less horizontal 

 thickish wrinkles. On the basal frontal part of the upper 



