Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 673 



The Florence Museum now contains ten specimens of this 

 Gull, two of which are young in down, obtained in May last 

 from the islets on the south-western coast of Sardinia. 



Yours &c., 

 Ca?cina Veccliia, Count E. Arrigoni Degli Oddi. 



Saltino, Florence. 

 28tli July, 1902. 



Sirs, — I have been requested to write a short account of 

 my visit to the Casquets Lighthouse on Tuesday, May 13th, 

 on the morning of which day a large number of birds met 

 their death by striking the lantern. 



In company with two of the Elder Brethren of the 

 Trinity House, I, as a guest, visited the Casquets in the 

 Trinity yacht ' Irene/ We left the ship in one of the boats, 

 and landed on the rock at about 10 a.m. for the purpose of 

 inspection. I explored the surroundings, and found an 

 enormous quantity of dead birds ; many of them were 

 skeletons only, but there must have been at least two or 

 three hundred that were quite fresh. Almost all were near 

 the foot of the lighthouse, and the lighthouse-keepers 

 informed me that " early that morning a large flock of 

 small birds, with a few Doves, had passed. Very few of 

 the Doves had struck the lantern, as they seemed to have 

 been more cautious than the small birds, a great number of 

 which had met their death, for over two hundred had been 

 picked up in the gallery outside the lantern.'^ I found that 

 all the small birds belonged to a species of Flycatcher. At 

 the first casual glance I took some of them for Robins, but on 

 closer inspection I at once noticed that they were all Fly- 

 catchers. About a quarter, or possibly a third, of the lot had 

 red breasts, and I cannot better describe them than in the 

 first line of Seebohm^s account of the Red-breasted Fly- 

 catcher, where he says : " This pretty little species is like a 

 miniature Robin in general appearance. ^^ I should have said 

 that the breast was a little more orange, not quite so dark 

 as in the Robin, but the picture of Muscicapa parva in Lord 

 Lilford's ' Birds of the British Islands ' (vol. ii. p. 88) at 



