Oo2 Dr. O. Finsch’s Ornithological Letter. 
a single feather. This bird, never seen before by the natives, 
was Anas penelope, in full winter dress! 'The specimen must 
have been a castaway, for it was so exhausted that the king’s 
boy had taken it by hand; it was merely a skeleton covered 
by feathers. 
During my visit to Arno, in the first week of November, 1 
had the pleasure of seeing, for the first time, a large breeding- 
colony of Noddies. We crossed the lagoon in order to land 
on the opposite shore on an island called “ Dagelab ”’ by the 
natives, which bears an unusual vegetation. The big gan- 
zal trees, about 80 feet high, form a small wood, and give, 
at a distance, the appearance of a “high island,’ a name 
which, in fact, was applied by Capt. Hudson in his map to 
the Arno atoll. Long before we reached the shore we saw 
hundreds of black birds in the air above the tops of the trees. 
They were Anous melanogenys, and another larger species, 
the different cry of which we noticed long before we procured 
the bird itself, in much smaller numbers. It proved to be 
Anous stolidus. The nests of the latter were placed in the 
clusters of ferns parasitic on the lower branches of Pandanus- 
trees, and I got some of the eggs through the natives. Hach 
nest, placed on the clump of leaves, contained only one egg, 
some freshly laid, others in all stages of incubation up to the 
young bird. Notwithstanding the full breeding-season, the 
birds were still moulting. The nests of Anous melanogenys 
were placed in the forked branches of trees, sometimes very 
far from the stem, and consisting only of a few twigs; they 
were in colonies; many single ganzal trees bore more than 
twenty nests. I did not get the eggs, as the natives were 
too lazy to climb the trees, saying they were unable to do so. 
The whole number of birds as yet observed and obtained 
by me in the Marshall group is twenty, namely :— 
Eudynamis taitiensis. Numenius femoralis. 
Carpophaga oceanica. Ardea sacra. 
Strepsilas interpres. Sterna bergii. 
Charadrius fulvus. melanauchen. 
? —— hiaticula. Anous melanogenys. 
. Actitis incana, —— stolidus. 
Calidris arenaria. Gygis alba. 
