Letters, Extracts, Notices, S^c. 297 



" marisma " ; and if Herr Winge will refer to the description, 

 he will see that there was no lack of other birds alongside the 

 Pelicans (including Larus argentatus) for comparison of their 

 relative sizes. 



Yours &c., 

 Moor House, Leamside, Abel and Alfred C. Chapman. 



February 23rd, 1895. 



Sirs, — lam desirous of expressing my thanks to the authori- 

 ties of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and 

 in particular to Mr. F. A. Lucas and Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, 

 for their prompt response to my appeal in ' The Ibis ' for last 

 April, in which I asked for nestlings and embryos for the 

 purpose of a careful study of the structure and distribution 

 of the so-called " nestling-down '^ (neossoptiles) . Through 

 the intermediation of these gentlemen the whole of the U.S. 

 Government collection has been placed at my disposal. 



This is the only response that my letter has evoked, 

 though I had hoped that my appeal would have aroused 

 some interest in a question about which, as yet, we know 

 little. Possibly, when the paucity of facts relating to this 

 subject becomes more fully realized, help will be forthcoming. 

 If collectors abroad could be induced to send home consign- 

 ments of embryos, newly-hatched nestlings, and adults — 

 preserved in chromic acid in the case of the embryos — they 

 would render us good service, inasmuch as we might then 

 hope to know a little more thoroughly the species at present 

 to hand. 



Repeating the request I made in 1894, 



Yours &c.. 

 Department of Comparative Anatomy, W. P. Pycraft. 



University Museum, Oxford, 

 10th February, 1895. 



Sirs, — By a slip of the pen, in the last number of ' The 

 Ibis,' p. 166, I wrote '' Sir John " for " Sir James C. Ross." 



Yours &c.. 

 The College, Durham, H. B. Tristram. 



Jan. 7, 1895. 



