234 Letters, Announcements , &;c. 



Marisraa had not yet come clown from the upper cornlands, 

 and that^ although there had been good rains about Christ- 

 maSj the country was still very dry, and there were very few 

 Waterfowl. Swallows {Hirundo rustica) seemed to have been 

 there some time ; and Hirundo urbica winters at Seville in 

 small numbers. On the 28th February an arrival of Storks 

 {Ciconia alba) had taken place, and a few Hoopoes had also 

 put in an appearance. 



Mr. E. F. Im Thurm has resigned his post at the Museum 

 at Georgetown, British Guiana, and accepted an appointment 

 as Colonial Magistrate on the Pomeroon river, in the same 

 colony, where he will have a better opportunity of studying 

 " nature " and the native races, in which he takes such a 

 lively interest. Mr, Im Thurm has applied to his friends at 

 home for an assistant collector ; and w^e believe measures have 

 been taken to send one out to him in the course of the 

 summer. 



Mr. W. A. Forbes's Niger Expedition. — Owing, it is be- 

 lieved, to the stranding of one of the river-steamers, no letters 

 have been received from Mr. Forbes since those dated from 

 Shonga on the 25th Oct., 1882. Shonga lies a short dis- 

 tance up a small creek on the right bank of the Niger, about 

 fifty miles below Rebba. At the time he wrote, Mr. Forbes 

 had been at Shonga three weeks, and expected to remain 

 three weeks longer, after which he was intending to accom- 

 pany Mr. Mackintosh and the British Consul in an attempt 

 to get up to Sokoto by water. Mr. Forbes had, unfortu- 

 nately, suffered from fever at Shonga, and had been able to 

 do very little collecting there. His list of birds obtained 

 only amounted to about 105 species; and the difficulty of 

 procuring spirit had interfered with his collection of fishes. 

 It has, we are glad to say, been ascertained that Mr. Forbes 

 was still at Shonga and in good health and spirits at the 

 commencement of January last. 



