LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 235 



case Cabanis' generic name Catriscus (Mus.-Hein. Vol. I., 43 

 note) will have to give place to Blyth's schcenicola. 



Nothing but a comparison of birds will settle these points. 

 English ornithologists, desirous of clearing up the matter, should 

 refer to Mr. Frank Bourdillon (10, Calverley Park Gardens, 

 Tunbridge Wells,) the re-discoverer of the species who has two 

 or three specimens of it with him. 



Mr. Sharpe, I notice, at page 72 of the Ibis for 1879, says :— 

 " Mr. Low sends two eggs of Leptoptilus javanicus along 

 with the head of the old female. The eggs are pale greenish 

 blue ; axis, 2*7 inches ; diameter, 1*95 inch." 



I think these eggs must be accepted with reservation. In 

 the first place these eggs are too small for the bird. The eggs 

 of Leptoptilus argalus average considerably above 3'0 inches 

 by 2 - 25. Those of Mycleria atistralis, a much lighter bird 

 than javanicus, average fully 2*9 by 2'15. In the second place 

 the eggs seem rather too elliptical for this class of bird. 

 In the third place this group of Storks does not lay pale green- 

 ish blue eggs. 



Mr. Oates has taken, as he believes, the eggs of this species, 

 and these eggs are similar to those of argalus. I suspect that 

 the eggs received by Mr. Sharpe are really those of Ardea 

 sumatrana to which the description and measurements would 

 apply well enough. 



$tttm io ifa <Mit0t\ 



Sir, 



I no not know whether it is a matter of interest to 

 you to know that coming through the Red Sea, on the 6th May, 

 I caught a Kestrel Hawk on board. We saw several parties 

 of four or five of these birds, and I am told that they come on 

 board nearly every voyage. The Hawk was a small one, with 

 conspicuous white claws, such as you warned me years ago to 

 be on the look-out for in Sind. I kept the specimen alive for 

 three days, but just before reaching Aden it gorged itself 

 with meat and died of suffocation. As of Henry the First we 

 can say of it, " it never smiled again and died of a surfeit" 

 (of beef, not of lampreys). I skinned it; but alas ! during the 

 brief interval in which I placed it in the rack in my cabin to 

 set, a rat got hold of the skin, and only its mangled remains 

 were subsequently discovered. 



The day after we left Aden, we had another visitor on board, 

 which I thought rather a curious one, as I suppose we were fifty 

 miles from land. It was a Goat Sucker, the largest I ever saw, 



