Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^-c. 625 



return lie contributed to this journal (Ibis, 1876, pp. 17-29) 

 a paper containing remarks on 113 species of birds obtained 

 or identified in that island. Thence he proceeded to Vannes, 

 in Brittany, which he made his headquarters for exploring 

 Belle He and the neighbouring islets in search of the Roseate 

 Tern, and, though unsuccessful, he undoubtedly deserved 

 success. Subsequently he made excursions — chiefly in spring, 

 for he was a keen birds'-nester — to the valley of the Seine 

 and some of the forests of Normandy, to Holland, and to the 

 Hebrides &c. in Great Britain. At his home at Hounsdown, 

 near Totton, Hants, on the borders of the New Forest, he 

 continued to study birds up to the close of his life, and his 

 garden was well stocked with nesting-boxes, at which he 

 could observe at leisure the habits of his feathered favourites. 

 He wrote little, but he Avas emphatically a field-naturalist. 



XLVIII. — Letters, Extracts, Notices, &)C. 



We have received the following letters, addressed '^ to tlic 

 Editors of 'The Ibis' ^':— 



Sirs, — In your notice of Mrs. Blackburn's ' Birds from 

 Moidart and elsewhere' (Ibis, 189G, p. 266), you quote the 

 following observations from that book : — " In the young 

 Grey-backed Crow the eyes are blue. I do not know if it is 

 so in the Black Carrion Crow"; and you add, "Nor do we 

 at this moment, though we incline to think that the irides in 

 the latter are dark." Up to the present all the Crows I have 

 examined have been too young at the time of their death to 

 show the colour of the irides properly ; but the other day 

 my brother-in-law brought me the head of a well-fledged 

 young Carrion Crow, and I can now state that the irides 

 are bluish-grey. Yours, &c., 



Bloxliam, Oxou, O. Y. Aplin. 



May, 1897. 



Sirs, — An Albatross, which has since been identified as 



-- Diomedea melanophrys, was caught on the Streetlcy Hall 



farm, near Linton, in Cambridgeshire, on July 9th, by a 



labourer named Samuo;! Barker, who killed and took it to 



