452 Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 



a previous instance is recorded in Bull. Soc. Imp. Acclim. 

 Paris, 1861, p. 318. In tliis case (the details of wliicli are 

 given in ' The Zoologist' for 1880, p. 254-) three eggs were 

 laid, the ^hen bird sat, incubation lasted 28 days, and one 

 young one was hatched. — J. E. Harting. 



Hirundo gutturalis at Brigliton. — From some two or three 

 dozen unfortunate Swallows netted in 1893 for hat furniture 

 near Brighton I selected two in which the pectoral collar is 

 broken up with red. These are probably examples of the 

 eastern race which have migrated to our shores from Asia, 

 answering to Hirundo gutturalis, Scop., figured and described 

 in Sharpe and Wyatt's ^Monograph of the Hirundinidse,' 

 pt. xvii. ; but Dr. Sharpe cautions his readers as to the diffi- 

 culty of setting up a well-defined specific difi'erence between 

 H. gutturalis and H. rustica. Or they may be instances of 

 one species varying so as to resemble another, as has been 

 recorded of Picus major and P. leuconotus, Picus major and 

 P. numidicus, Sturnus vulgaris and S. unicolor, Loxia curvl- 

 rostris and L. bifasciata, Accipiter nisus and A. rufiventris 

 ('Ibis,' 1893, p. 346), &c. 



It is probable that occasionally, under circumstances un- 

 known to us, a bird can and does throw out by a '' sport," as 

 it were, the distinctive colours of an allied species ; and this 

 consideration is most perplexing, not only in a study of the 

 Hirundinidje, but especially to anyone who is collecting and 

 verifying occurrences of exotic stragglers in the British 



Isles. J. H. GURNEY. 



The Nectarinia of Mount Kenia. — In von Hohnel's inter- 

 esting narrative of Count Teleki's ' Expedition to Lake 

 Rudolph' (English translation, vol. i. p. 374) the Sun-bird 

 of Mount Kenia is called Nectarinia deckeni. From a com- 

 munication lately received from Dr. Lorenz we learn that 

 this name was given to it by mistake, and that the speci- 

 men obtained by Count Teleki was correctly determined 

 by Dr. Lorenz as Nectarinia johnstoni, the same species as 

 Mr. Johnston discovered upon Mount Kilimanjaro. It will 

 be recollected that Dr, Gregory also obtained examples of 



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