588 Letters, Extracts, Notices, &^-c. 



some distance away. The young birds grow rapidly, and in 

 a few weeks are nearly the size of their parents ; but their 

 bodies are still too heavy to be supported by their long weak 

 legs, and not until the first plumage is complete are they able 

 to stand upright in the nest. The quantity of fish the young 

 birds consume is astonishing, and all day long the parents 

 are constantly employed supplying them with food. For 

 some time after leaving the nest the birds are of a light drab 

 colour, and they only assume the snow-white plumage of the 

 adult after several moults.'^ — C. A, Lloyd in ' Timehri,' u.s., 

 ix. p. 223. 



The Nomenclature of the Palamedeidae. — In preparing a 

 new Catalogue of the Animals in the Zoological Society^s 

 Gs^rdens, I have been compelled to decide by what names to 

 call the two species of Crested Screamer [Chauna) from 

 Argentina and Colombia respectively. These, like almost 

 every one else, I have hitherto catalogued as Chauna chavaria 

 and C. derhiana. But Count Salvadori has lately shown 

 (Cat. B. xxvii. p. 4) that Palamedea chavaria of Linnaeus 

 was probably based on a Colombian specimen, and has pro- 

 posed, therefore, to change the name of the northern species 

 to Chauna chavaria. To this I cannot agree, because no one 

 could then possibly tell which of the two species was desig- 

 nated by " chavaria " — a name that, after having been univer- 

 sally referred to one for the last hundred years, is now held 

 to apply better to the other. I have therefore determined to 

 retain ^'derhiana" as the specific name of the northern Chauna, 

 and to follow Count Salvadori's lead and call the southern 

 bird '' cristata," rejecting the Liunean term ''chavaria" 

 altogether for uncertainty. — P. L. S. 



Nation's 'Birds of Peru.' — Prof. Nation, of Lima, sends 

 us a printed sheet and a coloured lithograph of the beautiful 

 Trogon, Pharomacrus auriceps, which we understand to be a 

 kind of pattern of what his long-projected work on the Birds 

 of Peru will be, if he can carry out his plans. We trust that 

 he may succeed in doing so ; but the task is a heavy one. 



