Letters, Extracts, Notices, §c. 473 



materially increase our knowledge of one of the least known 

 portions of the Neotropical Fauna. 



Yours &c, 



Sarajevo, Bosnia, Othmar Reiser. 



March 3rd, 1904. 



[Further information about this expedition will be found 

 in the ' Ornithologische Monatsberichte' for March last 

 (vol. xii. p. 49). — Edd.] 



Sirs, — I have been much interested in the bird from 

 New 7 Guinea lately described by Messrs. Rothschild and 

 Hartert (Nov. Zool. x. p. 448, pi. xiv. f. 1) under the name 

 of Eafa maculata. The authors have attributed this re- 

 markable type to the Meliphagidse, although the peculiar 

 structure of the bill, " not longer than the head and very 

 wide, not running into a sharp point, but rounded off, just 

 before the tip," points to quite a different family. My 

 impression is that the bird belongs to the Dieseidse in the 

 neighbourhood of the genera Melanocharis , Urochuris, Pristo- 

 rhamphus, and Rhamphocharis. It is to the last-named genus 

 that Eafa seems particularly akin ; the bill is very similar, 

 only somewhat longer ; in the style of colouring also there is 

 some likeness between Eafa maculata and the female of 

 Rhamphocharis crassirostris, which has the upper and under 

 parts spotted with whitish, although not so regularly as it 

 appears in the figure of E. maculata. The white spots at 

 the tips of the inner webs of the outer rectrices are almost of 

 the same style in both birds. 



Yours &c, 



Turin, Zool. Museum, T. SalvaDORI. 



April 26th, 1904. 



Sirs, — In the second part of the work ' Die Vogel der 

 palaarktische Fauna/ p. 224, Mr. Hartert identifies my 

 Ammomanes assabensis (Boll. Mus. Tor. no. 425, 1902) with 

 A. samharensis Shell. B. of Afr. iii. p. 99, pi. xxi. fig. 1. 

 The latter was described from Amba, in the highlands of 

 Abyssinia ; while my species is from Assab, a low sandy place 



SER. VIII. — VOL. IV. 2 L 



