536 Letters, Announcements, S^c, 



Mr. Buller in the same paper {loc. cit.) states that " Falco 

 subniger and Milvus isurus, which are quoted by Mr. Gurney as 

 New-Zealand birds, have never been found in this country" *. 

 My authority for quoting New Zealand as a habitat for the former 

 was the veteran ornithologist, M. Jules P. Verreaux, who in- 

 formed me that a New-Zealand specimen had passed through 

 his hands. With regard to the latter, the Norwich Museum 

 possesses a specimen, which I obtained from Mr. A. D. Bartlett, 

 who assured me, at the time, that he had received it from New 

 Zealand, and had satisfied himself that it had been killed in 

 that country. Probably both these species, if not indigenous to 

 New Zealand, may occasionally occur there as accidental visitors 

 from the Australian continent. 



Mr. Buller also refers to the Harrier of New Zealand in the 

 following terms [torn. cit. p. 107) : — " Whether Circus gouldi 

 and Circus assimilis are identical, is, I believe, a disputed point 

 with ornithologists ". I have recently compared several New- 

 Zealand specimens of C. gouldi, Bonaparte, with Australian 

 specimens of the Harrier figured in Mr. Gould's ' Birds of Aus- 

 tralia' (pi. 26) under the name of C. assimilis, and was satisfied 

 that they are absolutely identical. 



This species should stand as C. gouldi, the other name having 

 been erroneously attached to it by Mr. Gould ; for the bird 

 originally figured and described under that title in Jardine and 

 Selby's * Illustrations of Ornithology' (ii. pi. 51) is the young 

 of C.jardinii (B. Austral, pi. 27), and this latter is therefore the 

 true C. assimilis of those ornithologists. I am, &c., 



J. H. Gurney. 



Sir, — A new species of Barbet has been passed over as an 

 intermediate state of the young of Megalcema mystacophanus 

 (Temminck) ; and for it we propose the following name and dia- 

 gnosis : — 



Megal^ma humii, sp. n. 



Sexes alike : body green ; lores, a triangular occipital patch, 



* [Both these statements were made in Mr. Gould's ' Handbook to the 

 Birds of Australia ' (i. pp. 29 and 51), and the first repeated in ' The Ibis ' 

 for 1866 (p. 421).— Ed.] 



