182 Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 



should have passed it over in silence had it not been for your 

 note, for I am loth to waste time aud paper on such a petty 

 personal matter. My intercourse with Dr. Koenig was very 

 slight. I called on him twice, and saw him for a few minutes 

 on each occasion. He returned my first call when I was out. 

 This was the whole of our acquaintance. When I visited 

 him after his return from Palma my chief object was to 

 caution him about an imposition that had been practised ou 

 hitn, a neotropical Owl-skin {Glaucidimn sijii), the history of 

 which I knew, having been palmed off upon him as shot iu 

 Teneriffe^. He showed me what he got in Palma. I saw 

 examples of Columba laurivora, which I well knew to exist in 

 that island, my friend Capt, Kent having shot several there 

 three years before. I observed, " Why you told Mr. Meade 

 Waldo that C livia was the only Pigeon to be found in 

 Palma !" He stammered out some excuse, and told me he 

 had found a new Robin and a new Finch. I simply replied, 

 " Oh ! they are only varieties. Mr. Waldo tried to make a 

 new species of the Gomera Robin, but it would not do.^' As 

 to the rivalry which your review suggests, the id^ea is too 

 absurd. Mr. Meade Waldo and I had been ransacking the 

 islands for two years, and Mr. Meade W'aldo is an excellent 

 Spanish scholar, while Dr. Koenig does not speak the language. 

 In conclusion I must express regret that the editor of a journal 

 of such repute as the ' Journal fiir Ornithologie * should have 

 condescended to exhibit such petty international jealousy as 

 is shown in his editorial note. 



Yours &c., 



H. B. Tristram. 



7 Radnor Place, Hyde Park, W., 

 3rd Dec, 1891. 



Sir, — Owing to unusually stormy weather during the 

 past autumn, and especially to the prevalence of gales more 

 or less from the westward, an unusual number of irregular 

 visitors have been noticed on the coasts of the United King- 

 dom. For instance, Wilson's Petrel (Oceanites oceanica) 



* See editorial remarks, ' Ibis,' 1891, p. 616. 



