270



Correspo?ide?ice.



when the lien was sitting, we had frequent snow-storms, and occasionally

sharp frosts about the time she was hatching. Their food has consisted of

canary seed, hemp and millet and a large quantity of English white oats,

and they have had plain cake daily (of which they seem very fond),

groundsel and shepherd’s purse have also been given, but they did not seem

to care much about them. The young birds are just like the old ones,

except their tails are not so long, but they bow to one another and make

the same call and behave quite in the same way. Duncan Parker.


P.S.—Since the above was written the birds have again gone to nest

and are now (June 6tli) sitting.


[We believe this is the first instance of the nesting of this species in

Great Britain. If any members or correspondents know of a previous

instance we should be much obliged if they will kindly let us know.— Ed.]



HECK’S LONG-TAILED GRASSFINCH.


Sir, —In the last number I wrote a letter under the above heading

in which I pointed out my reason for disagreeing with my friend Mr.

Gregory Mathews in his assumption that Poephila hecki was synonymous

with P. acuticauda.


The last paragraph of my letter, however, is perhaps somewhat un¬

fair to Mr. Mathews, and I hasten to apologise if this is so.


I said, in effect, that he had no right to sweep aside the testimony of

those who had seen the living birds, when he himself had only seen the

dried skins in which the colour of the bill had probably faded. This may

seem to imply that I accuse Mr. Mathews of looking only at the skins and

not at the labels.


Mr. Mathews has since pointed out to me that all of his skins are

labelled with full data, and that his collectors have instructions to observe

especially the colour of the bill and soft parts generally, and to carefully

note them.


Hence it is clear that all of Mr. Mathews’ specimens belong to the

typical yellow-billed form, a fact which, however, does not in any way prove

that a distinct red-billed form does not exist; even though the habitat of

some of his birds is the same as that from which North, on the evidence of

a catcher only, believed P. hecki to originate.


So far we know that the red-billed P. hecki exists somewhere in

Northern Australia, but the exact locality still remains doubtful.


D. Skth-Smith.



Sir,—O n May 4, 1S97, 1 obtained a couple of Long-tailed Grassfiuches ;

at that time some few were on sale at 50/- and 52/- the nominal pair, one

dealer asking 60/-. O11 July 24, the late Dr. W. T. Greene sent me a body


for identification : “ Did you ever see any thing like this before ? ” he wrote;

“ but for the elongated tail feathers, it looks like an ordinary Parson



