448 Letters, Announcements, &)'c. 



distance, owing to the grey, smoky hue which pervades its 

 plumage. It also flies more quickly, is much shyer, and is 

 a rather heavier bird than T. sharpii, the habits of which more 

 closely resemble those of T. cegyptiacus. 



I am, &c., 



G. Ernest Shelley. 



Zoology has lost one of its brightest and most steady lights by 

 the death, on the 26th of May last, of Dr. J. H. Blasius, Pro- 

 fessor of the Natural Sciences in the Caroline College of Bruns- 

 wick and Director of its Ducal Museum. Setting aside his 

 other labours, which were neither itvi nor inconspicuous, the 

 deceased will be best known to our readers by his papers — "On 

 the Diversity in the Estimate of the European Ornis, and its 

 Causes," and his "Ornithological Letter on Heligoland,"of which 

 translations appeared in the old series of this Journal (Ibis, 1861, 

 pp. 292-302; 1862, pp. 58-72), by his continuation, jointly with 

 Dr. Baldamus, of Naumann's 'Vogel Deutschlauds^ formerly 

 reviewed by us (Ibis, 1862, pp. 40-58), and by his useful 

 * List of the Birds of Europe,^ also noticed in these pages 

 (Ibis, 1863, pp. 350-352). It had long been hoped that he 

 would bring out, as a companion to his excellent ' Saugethiere 

 Deutschlands,^ a similar volume on the birds of Germany, for 

 which, as is known, he had amassed a large stock of materials, 

 and thus completed a work for which no one was more com- 

 petent ; but his attention had latterly been turned to, and his 

 time occupied by, other pursuits; and for the last seven or 

 eight years, we believe, he published little, if any thing, on 

 Zoology. Had he been able to give the woi-ld the fruits of the 

 labour he had expended on this subject, his book on German 

 mammals shows how well executed it would have been. He 

 was most deservedly esteemed as one of the highest authorities 

 on European Ornithology ; and, though we could not always 

 agree with his views, especially his principles of nomenclature, 

 the judicial faculty which he possessed in no common degree 

 entitled his opinions to the greatest consideration, and we deeply 

 regret the sudden blow which has removed from among us so 

 learned and so accurate a man of science. 



