Letters, Announcements, &c. 143 
32. Taczanowski on the Red-tailed Shrikes of Central Asia. 
[Quelques mots sur les Pie-griéches 4 queue rousse de l’Asie Centrale. 
Par M. L. Taczanowski. Bull. Soc. Zool. France, 1878, p. 36. | 
After criticising M. Vian’s paper on this subject (Bull. Soc. 
Zool. 1877, p. 208), M.'Taczanowski propounds his own views 
on the vexed question of the Lanius phenicurus of Pallas, and 
describes at full length the four forms found in Northern 
Asia, which are, according to his opinion, (1) Otomela cris- 
tata (Linn.), of E. Siberia, (2) O. phenicuroides (Severtz.) , 
of Turkestan, (8) O. speculigera, Tacz., of Southern Daouria, 
and (4) O. isabellina (Ehr.), of Turkestan. 
XII.—Letters, Announcements, &c. 
We have received the following letters addressed to the 
Editors of ‘The Ibis ’°— 
74 Jermyn St., London, S.W. 
November 20, 1879. 
Srrs,—I visited the Zoological Garden at Antwerp towards 
the beginning of last September, and carefully examined the 
Eagle on which, without having seen it, Dr. Bree founded 
his supposed new species, Aquila culleni. I found the bird 
alone in a large cage, and labelled “Aquila culleni, Bree.” It 
was very tame, in beautiful plumage, and very clean and 
healthy-looking. It does not now much resemble the figure 
in Dr. Bree’s ‘ Birds of Europe,’ second edition, vol. i. p. 89, 
as it is much darker and more fulvous in colour than there 
represented, and the tarsus is, of course, feathered down to 
the toes, as in all true Eagles, and not bare, as it is errone- 
ously figured in that plate. In colour the bird much resem- 
bles an immature Spanish Imperial Eagle (Aquila adalberti) 
the plumage of the underparts being of a bright fulvous 
colour. This Eagle has quite got over that “silence in con- 
finement ” on which Dr. Bree so much relies asa specific cha- 
racter ; for it kept up an incessant croaking during the whole 
time I was looking at it; mdeed I think I never met with 
so noisy an Eagle. JI am most decidedly of opinion that it 
