1917-] Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 273 



A Long-lived Eagle. 

 Sir,— In 'The Ibis' for 1877 my late father tlesciibed 

 (pp. 219-221) at some length a pair of AYhite-shouUlered 

 Eagles (Aqnila adalberti Brelim) which were obtained from 

 a nest in Spain by Lord Lilford in May 1872, and Lord 

 Lilford again refers to these birds in ' The Norwich 

 Naturalists' Transactions ' (vol. iv. pp. 566, 567). One of 

 these Eagles was killed by an accident when about twenty- 

 three years old, but the other lias just died (December 26, 

 1916) at the patriarchal age of nearly forty-five, which may 

 be worth putting on record. 



Yours obediently, 

 Keswick Hall, Norfolk. J. H. GuiiNEY. 



18 January, 1917. 



The Damaraland Hornbill. 



SiR^ — Having been on active service ever since the 

 beginning of the Avar I have had very little opportunity 

 of studying 'The Ibis,' and it was only recently that the 

 numbers for 1915 reached me here. I was very much 

 interested in Mr. Claude Grant's excellent articles on the 

 birds collected in British East Africa and Uganda. I wish 

 all ornithologists would go a-s carefully into the subject as 

 Mr. Grant and monograph each species and its various races. 



I differ from Mr. Grant, however, in one point : he 

 states that in his opinion the Red-billed Hornbill from 

 Damaraland named damarensis is only an albinistic form of 

 Lophoceros erythrorhynchus cajfer. I am sure he is wrong 

 in this. I have been collecting birds in this country 

 now for some time and have had plenty of opportunity of 

 observing the forms of Red-billed Horubills, which are not 

 uncommon, and the following are my conclusions: — The 

 form found in the north of Damaraland, at this place for 

 instance, is most certainly L. erythrorhynchus caffer, but as 

 one goes south it gradually merges into damarensis ; birds 

 collected at Akanjaude appear somewhat intermediate, some 

 favouring caffer others damarensis. I am not sure how far 

 south the Red-billed Hornbill occurs, but I know it is found 



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