562 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



Lave examined many specimens of the form witli the blue 

 gorget, and have found that almost all of tliem had a small 

 spot of white on the middle of the throat. In several of 

 them this spot was scarcely larger than a pin's head, and in 

 one, which had an apparently unspotted blue gorget, I 

 discovered by close examination, on moving the central 

 feathers, a slight Avhite speck. It appears to me, therefore, 

 that the form with the blue gorget is merely an individual 

 varietyof the white-spotted bird, and not even a subspecies, and 

 that the older birds have usually a larger white spot than the 

 vo\inger ones. Brehm described the unspotted Bluethroat 

 in 1822 (Beitr. zur Vogelk. ii. p. 173) as Sylvia wolfii, and 

 in the following year (Lehrb. d. Naturg. i. p. 344) figured it 

 with an unspotted blue gorget on the same plate as a 

 specimen with a small Avhite spot, which latter he called 

 Sylvia suecica. As, therefore, I consider the bird with an 

 unspotted (or apparently unspotted) blue gorget to be 

 specifically inseparable from the white-spotted bird, I con- 

 sider that they should both stand as Cyanecala wolfii (C. L. 

 Brehm), 1822, and not as Cynuecula leucocyana C. L. Brehm, 

 as described by him in his ' Yiigel Deutschlands ' (p. 352) in 



1831. 



I am, Sirs, yours &c., 



H. E. Dresser. 



44 Ilornton Court, Kensingtou, W., 

 L>Oth May, 1909. 



Sirs, — The White-fronted Goose [Anser alhifrons) was 

 until lately regarded as a bird of rare and irregular appear- 

 ance in Southern Italy, where a single specimen was obtained 

 in the winter of 1870, as has been mentioned by Prof. Costa. 

 It has been recorded also from Tuscany and from near 

 Rome. In the north-eastern districts, Lombardy and 

 Yenetia, the species is less rare, and of irregular appearance 

 during winter months almost every year. But it does not 

 seem to have occurred on the Puglie, in Calabria, or on the 

 islands in the Mediterranean. Last year, however, in 

 December, large flocks of this bird arrived in the Capitanata 

 and the large marshes of Manfredonia, and stayed the whole 



