Letters, Extracts, and Notes. [Ibis, 



Irish Naturalist. (Vol. xxviii. uo. 9.) 



Faima och Flora. (1919, Haft 4.) 



Jourii. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. (Vol. xxvi. no. 3.) 



Revue Frangaise d'Ornitholog-ie. (Nos. 126-129.) 



Scottish Naturalist. (Nos. 93-98.) 



XIX. — Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



Dear Sir, — I would be glad if you would kindly correct 

 all error which appears in tiiy letter on " Hiera'etus ayresi^'' 

 which was printed in the October number of ' The Ibis/ 

 1919. The concluding lines should read : " which proves 

 to be barely sixteen inches in length, and not 17| inches as 

 stated in my notes/' 



I am, 



Yours faithfully, 

 Roberts Heio-hts, C. G. FincH-Davies 



Pretoria. (Lt. 1st S.A.M.R.). 



6 December, 1919. 



Dear Sir, — A short time ago the Director of the South 

 African Museum kindly sent me for examination the skin 

 of a small Falcon, purporting to be a juvenile of the African 

 Hobby Falco cnvieri. As soon as I saw the specimen it 

 struck me that this was no Hobby, the wings being too 

 short for any species of that group : and on further 

 examining it I came to the conclusion that it was a young 

 male of Falco cesalon. To make sure I took the specimen 

 down to the Transvaal Museum for comparison with some 

 young males of F. cEsalon from Europe, and found it to 

 agree with them in every respect. It is in the first juvenile 

 plumage, which is not much worn. There are two feathers 

 of the adult plumage amongst the upper tail-coverts, which 

 are blue-grey with the characteristic dark shaft marks. 



This specimen is labelled as having been procured at 

 Durban, Natal. The question arises, is this locality 

 correct ; if so, it would mean an extraordinary extension 

 of the range of this species, which, according to the latest 

 B. O. U. List of British Birds, has not been recorded from 

 further south in Africa than Nubia and Abvssinia. 



