296 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



Ornithologists in Foreign Parts. — We have no direct news 

 of Lieut. Boyd Alexander, but we are informed that he is still 

 at Lake Tchad or in its immediate vicinity. He arrived there 

 in October last, and accounts of his journey across Eastern 

 Nigeria have been published in ' The Times ' of January 

 2.2nd and in the ' Geographical Journal'' for February last 

 (vol. xxxv. p. 176). He had suffered the great misfortune of 

 losing his brother, Capt. Claud Alexander, the head of his 

 surveying- party, who had succumbed to an attack of enteric 

 fever. 



Mr. A. E. Pratt, a well-known collector, who passed two 

 years in the Owen Stanley Range of New Guinea in 1902-3 

 (see Bull. B. O. C. xiv. p. 69), and on his return brought 

 home fine examples of several species of Birds-of-Paradise, 

 has left again for New Guinea, accompanied by his two sons. 

 On this occasion he proposes to penetrate into the Charles 

 Louis Range in Dutch New Guinea, which is quite a terra 

 incognita. He will proceed first to Dobbo, the port of the 

 Am Islands, and thence cross to the River Outanata, on 

 the opposite coast of New Guinea, where there is a Dutch 

 Settlement. Mr. Pratt, we are told, has prepared for publi- 

 cation an account of his former journey, which is now passing 

 through the press, and will, no doubt, contain interesting 

 particulars concerning the Birds of New Guinea. 



Mr. Douglas Carruthers has completed his engagement at 

 the American College in Beirut, and has put the collection 

 of native birds into good order ; he now proposes to go, 

 accompanied by a friend, into the Syrian Desert about 

 Palmyra, and try to make a complete collection of the 

 mammals and birds of that little-known district. On his 

 way back he will probably make a stay on some of the 

 highest points of the Anti-Lebanon. 



Mr. Walter Goodfellow has started again for the East, 

 and was at Singapore last Christmas on his way to make 

 another excursion into the mountains of Southern Mindanao, 

 where he is sure that more novelties remain to be dis- 

 covered. He could hardly expect to find another Goodfellowia 



