Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 633 



I do not doubt that the bird referred to is the Lesser Bird 

 of Paradise {Paradisea minor typica), the female of which^ as 

 is generally known, is quite plain. 



There is another somewhat similar legend on record from 

 German New Guinea, which relates to Paradisea minor 

 finschi and was communicated in 1896 by the missionary 

 K. Vetter, of Simbang, on the Bay of Astrolabe, to the 

 ' Zeitschrift fiir afrikanisclie und oceanische Sprachen ' 

 (vol. ii. pp. 230-234), under the title ^' Dien sega = Bird-of^ 

 Paradise the Greater.^^ 

 I am. Sirs, 



Yours &c., 



Berlin. A. B. Meyer, C.M.Z.S., F.M.B.O.U. 



Sirs, — May I be permitted to correct some errors which 

 appear to have crept into my paper " Contributions to the 

 Ornithology of Egypt " in the last number of ' The Ibis.^ 



On page 492 the White-spotted Bluethroat has been 

 placed under the heading of and along with the typical 

 form, and the name leucocyanus has been changed to wolfi, 

 though it is correctly printed in my introduction. The name 

 wolfi has been used for the variety of Bluethroat with an 

 entirely unspotted throat. Thus to anyone casually glancing 

 through my paper it would appear that I had met with three 

 forms of Bluethroat in Egypt instead of two. 



Again, on page 498 we find under the binomial name 

 Sturnus vulgaris the following statement :— *'A bird obtained 

 at Giza belongs to this form.'^ This would have been quite 

 correct if the subspecific name ^' purpurascens," which I put 

 into the proof-sheet, had not been left out. 



The birds of Egypt are of great interest on account of the 

 abundance of subspecific forms which occur there, either as 

 residents or on migration, and to these I have been paying 

 particular attention. 



Yours &c., 



Michael J. Nicoll. 



[If Mr. Nicoll will look at the ' List of British Birds' of 



2x2 



