Letters, Extracts, Notices, S^c. 347 



About three months ago a number of these little Hemi- 

 podes, supposed to have come from India, were received by 

 Mr. Jamrach. Thanks to Lord Lilford, I heard of their 

 arrival some time after, and then, out of what remained un- 

 sold, only seven had survived, viz. five females and two males. 

 These were sent down to me at the Natural History Museum, 

 and I purchased two pairs, but one of the males was nearly 

 dead when it arrived, and expired shortly after. The others 

 seemed fairly healthy, and I hoped it might be possible to 

 get them to breed in confinement ; but within a month, in 

 spite of every care and attention, they all died, death, in 

 each case, being immediately due to pneumonia. One by 

 one I had the melancholy pleasure of dissecting them, and 

 found that the brightly-coloured birds were both females, while 

 the dull ones with barred breasts were males. The younger 

 of the two females still had traces of barring, similar to that 

 of the male, on the chest and breast. 



These birds became very tame almost immediately in confine- 

 ment, and frequently uttered a low creaking note, reminding 

 one strongly of the sound produced by a wheelbarrow that 

 wants oiling. The females, especially when startled or ex- 

 cited, have a curious habit of jerking up their short tails 

 in a very Rail-like manner. I believe this is the first time 

 that specimens of T. nigricollis have been brought alive to 

 this country. 



Besides the four specimens mentioned above, I dissected a 

 number of others of both sexes, with similar results. 



W. R. Ogilvie Grant 

 March 8th, 1892. (Nat. Hist. Museum). 



New Birds from New Guinea. — We arc sorry to see that 

 the Naturalists of Queensland continue to publish scientific 

 papers in their Parliamentary Blue-books. There is no 

 objection to such papers being reprinted in this way, but 

 they should, in our opinion, be originally issued in some 

 scientific periodical. 



The ^Annual Report on British New Guinea^ for the 



