Birds of the PJdlippme Islands. 135 



At this time he was living in a miserable plank- hut, 

 and, being very ill from dysentery, was writing from 

 his bed as being the warmest place he could find. The 

 weather was then wet and misty, with a north-east wind, and 

 the nights very cold, the glass sometimes showing a tem- 

 perature of 49°. Little or no fresh food was to be had, an 

 occasional pig being the greatest luxury obtainable ; whilst 

 he was writing one could be heard squealing outside the 

 door of his house, waiting to be purchased for the moderate 

 sum of five shillings. In this letter he described the Crimson- 

 spotted Racquet-tailed Parrot [Prioniturus montanus) and a 

 pair of Marche's Fruit-Pigeon [Ptilopus marchii), both of 

 which he believed to be new ; the latter had, however, already 

 been described by ]M. Oustalet from the type — then unique — 

 in the Paris Museum. 



On the 16th of February he announced his intention of 

 returning to the coast, and visiting on the way a place where 

 he hoped to procure further examples of the new Oriole 

 [Oriolus albiloris), of which a single female — the type — had 

 already been procured during his second expedition to the 

 Benguet district. In a later letter, however, written from 

 Manilla on the 14th of March, he says '^I utterly failed to 

 meet with 0. albiloris again," which was very unfortunate, 

 as it would have been extremely interesting to ascertain the 

 plumage of the male. We were pleased to learn that he was 

 then once more in good health, the cold in the high moun- 

 tains, where there was often 2° or 3° of frost in the night, 

 having completely restored him. 



It had been Mr. Whitehead's intention to visit the Mari- 

 anne Islands, starting from Manilla about the 20th of April, 

 but the steamer that had been running had been taken off 

 and a thoroughly unseaworthy boat substituted, so he 

 deemed it prudent to alter his plans, and returned to the 

 north of Luzon with the intention of working the east-coast 

 range. The country is there much more difficult than the 

 Lepanto district, for there are no roads, and porters are not 

 to be had, so it remains to be seen what success he will meet 

 with. 



