Letters, Extracts, Notices, &^c. 469 



Sir, — In accordance with your kind invitation, 1 write to 

 call the attention of ornithologists to a fact concerning the 

 distribution of the Sun-bird of Palestine [Nectarinia osete) 

 which seems to have escaped the notice of most authorities. 

 In Canon Tristram's work on the ' Flora and Fauna of 

 Palestine/ p. 64, he states that this bird has not been 

 observed (at least to his knowledge) any further north than 

 Carmel. Now I have repeatedly seen and taken specimens 

 of both sexes, young as well as adults, at Bey rout, where it 

 is a fairly common visitant in winter and spring ; indeed, it 

 is no unusual occurrence to see one or two at a time in my 

 own little garden, whenever there is a climbing bean in 

 flower or some similar attraction, although my house is near 

 the centre of the town, in a noisy and crowded quarter. I 

 suspect, though I cannot prove it, that the bird even breeds 

 in the vicinity of Beyrout occasionally. 



I am. Sir, 



Beyrout, Syria, Yours &c.. 



May 1892. AV. T. Van Dyck, M.D. 



Sill, — I beg leave to call your attention to a remarkable coin- 

 cidence, showing how the same errors may be independently 

 propagated in two quarters. In the last number of the 

 ' Records of the Australian Museum,' published at Sydney in 

 April, Professor Newton appears to imply (though his sentence, 

 being ungrammatical, might possibly be interpreted otherwise) 

 that I have repeated a statement of Temminck's that the 

 Sandcrling occurs in the Sunda Islands and New Guinea, 

 He seems to suggest that my remark that the Sandcrling is 

 a winter visitor to the islands of the Malay Archipelago is 

 an unverified generalization from Temrainck. 



Curiously enough, in the last number of the ' Aves Ha- 

 waiienses,' published in this country in May, Mr. Scott 

 Wilson repeats the same charges in a very similar sentence, 

 giving the same references and falling into the same errors. 



I based my statement upon four skins : one in the Leyden 

 Museum, obtained in Java about 1826 ; two in the same 

 Museum, collected on the same island hi 1862; and a fourth 



