240 Dr. R. B. Sharpe on Birds 



Mr. Everett writes to me as follows : — '' By this mail I am 

 despatching a small collection of birds from the Tawi-Tawi 

 Archipelago. I hope yon may be able to find time to make 

 a list of the species, as the locality is a new one. Some of 

 them appear to be new, but I am not informed up to date 

 of what our American and German co-workers have been 

 doing in the Philippines, so I will not venture to specify the 

 novelties. The collection having been formed in July, it is 

 free from northern migrants ; and it is therefore, I believe, 

 fairly representative of the species permanently inhabiting 

 these islands, though of course much smaller than if it had 

 been made during the N.E. monsoon. I spent 10 days on 

 the island of Sibutu and 17 days on Bongao, sending my 

 men to the main island of Tawi-Tawi also for a few days. 

 Most unfortunately, after waiting five years for an opportunity 

 of working these islands, I was seized, the very day I landed 

 on Sibutu, by what I now know to have been a severe attack 

 of influenza (so-called), which so entirely prostrated me that 

 T was unable to attend even to the sexing of the specimens, 

 and had to leave it to my native hunters — a fact which you 

 will bear in mind in looking over the skins. From the day 

 that I landed until I had to leave owing to no rice being 

 procurable, I was unable to do any collecting or even to walk 

 most of the time. Nevertheless my men worked well, and 

 the collection is quite sufficient to show that the avifauna of 

 the Tawi-Tawi Islands is to all intents and purposes identical 

 with that of the Sulu Archipelago, the Philippine element 

 immensely preponderating over that derived from Borneo 

 even in Sibutu, although in the latter the Bornean infusion 

 is more clearly discernible. You will recollect with regard 

 to Sibutu that Guillemard, in the paper read in 1885 

 (P. Z. S. 1885, p. 247) on his Sulu collection, anticipated 

 that ' a more extended knowledge of its avifauna would 

 probably show a preponderance of western rather than 

 eastern forms,'' — founding his opinion, which I shared, on 

 the fact that, whereas the sea intervening between Sibutu 

 and Borneo appeared to be shallow, that between Sibutu 

 and the Tawi-Tawi Islands was known to be of great 



