Letters, Extracts, Notices, b;c. 145 



35. Townsend' s Field-notes on Californian Zoology. 



[Field-notes on the Mammals, Birds, and lleptiles of Northern Cali- 

 fornia. By Charles H. Townsend, Pr. U.S. N. M. 1887, p. 1-59.] 



This paper contains a series of field-notes on the birds of 

 Northern California by a well-known explorer. About 260 

 species are known from California north of the 40th parallel, 

 of which more than 200 were met with by Mr. Townsend 

 during his travels in 1883-5, in connexion with the U.S. 

 Commission on Fish and Fisheries in California. 



XII. — Letters, Extracts, Notices, i^c. 



We have received the following letters addressed to the 



Editors of ' The Ibis : '— 



Nortlirepps Hall, Norwich, 

 Nov. 16, 1887. 



Sirs, — The Norwich Museum has lately obtained through 

 the good offices of Professor Menzbier a specimen of Scops 

 brucei (Hume), collected in Turkestan by the late Dr. Severt- 

 zofF at Utch-Kurgan, a town near the river Syr-Daria. 



Professor Menzbier informs me that the specimen sent 

 by him is of the same species as that for which Dr. Cabanis 

 proposed the specific name of " obsoletus " in the Jouru. fiir 

 Orn. for 1875, p. 126, founded on two specimens in the 

 Berlin Museum, one from Bokhara, and the other from 

 Syria. 



Mr. Hume's specific name of " brucei " having been pub- 

 lished in November 1872, has priority. 



Mr. Charles Cross, who resides on the island of Negros, 

 in the Philippine group, has lately presented me with some 

 birds collected by him on that island, amongst which is an 

 adult skin of Polioaetus ichthya'etus (Horsf.), a species which 

 I believe has not been hitherto recorded from the Philippine 

 Islands. 



This specimen, which has been placed in the Norwich 

 Museum, was killed near a river on the 6th January, and its 

 crop contained fisli. 



I am &c., 



J. H. GURNEY. 

 SER. v. VOL. VI. L 



