584 Letters, Announcements, &^c. 



returned to England for a few months, but only to make 

 preparations for anotlier trip to the Moluccas and the adja- 

 cent Papuan Islands, which offer so vast a field for the 

 energetic explorer. — Dr. O. Finsch is at present resident at 

 Bremen, hard at work on the materials accumulated during 

 his four years' travel in the Pacific; but he has promised to visit 

 us in London in the course of the winter and show us his 

 wonderful series of sketches of wild life and savage customs. — 

 Mr. H. H. Johnston, whose letter on the Balceniceps is given 

 above, is also engaged on the results of his successful expedi- 

 tion to S.W. Africa. His birds, among which are some of 

 great interest, have been placed in Capt. Shelley's hands for 

 determination. — Our friend Major C. H. T. Marshall, now 

 resident in the little Hill-State of Chumba, adjacent to Cash- 

 mere, has discovered a new Monaul [Lop hop horns), of which 

 we shall give a figure in our next number. He also promises 

 us an early article upon the birds of Chumba. 



Obituary. — Adrian Luis Jean Francisco Sumichrast, 

 an able naturalist and collector, well known to the scientific 

 world, died on the 26th of September, 1882, after a short 

 illness, and in the fifty-fourth year of his age, at Tonala 

 (Chiapas), Mexico. 



Professor Sumichrast, although for thirty years a resident 

 in Mexico, to the study of the natural history and antiqui- 

 ties of which country he devoted much of his attention, was 

 a European by birth, having been born on the 15th of 

 October, 1828, at Yvorne (Canton du Vaud), Switzerland. He 

 was a member of the Societe des Sciences Naturelles du 

 Canton du Vaud, of La Sociedad Mexicana de Geografia, of 

 the Societe Zoologique de France, of the Entomological Society 

 of Philadelphia, &c., and a valued and active correspondent 

 of the Smithsonian Institution, of the Cambridge Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology, and of several other noted scientific 

 institutions ("^ American Naturalist,' vol. xvii. p. 904). Prof. 

 Sumichrast is well known to ornithologists as the author of 

 an excellent memoir on the geographical distribution of the 

 native birds of the department of Vera Cruz, published in 

 the Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, 

 vol. i. pp. 542-563 (1869). 



