532 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



and bill scales off, thus producing the brighter colours 

 beneath. 



I do not quite understand Mr. Grant^s remark that birds 

 all killed in the same year must be examined in order to fix 

 times of seasonal moult and plumage. It seems to me more 

 necessary to examine series from about the same dates 

 of hatching, £or^ as one can find chicks from about the 

 beginning of May to the end of July in any year, so will the 

 subsequent changes in plumage etc., vary accordingly in 

 date. 



C. B. TiCEHURST. 



Lowestoft, 

 May 12, 1914. 



Sir, — I sometimes see "News of Members" in ^The 

 Ibis/ so perhaps some information about the present doings 

 of Mr. H. C. Eobinson, Director of Museums, Federated 

 Malay States, and myself might be of sufficient interest to 

 insert in the next number of 'The Ibis.' 



We are now commencing an expedition to Mt. Indrapura 

 or Korinchi Peak, 12,700 ft., the highest mountain in 

 Sumatra, which has never been visited by Englishmen or 

 seriously collected on, though the Mid-Sumatia Expedition 

 of about the middle of the last century, appears to have 

 taken home a few things from there when they made the first 

 ascent from the other side. 



While we propose to take everything in the way of zoology 

 and botany that we can lay our hands on, birds will be 

 the principal object of our work. This portion of Sumatra 

 is quite unknown ornithologically, for nothing has been done 

 since the work of Beccari and Bock in the Padang High- 

 lands in the late seventies, and of Forbes, who got a few 

 birds on the Dempo to the south during the course of his 

 wanderings in the eighties. So not only do we hope to 

 get new species, but also to rediscover the rare birds ob- 

 tained by the two former naturalists which have not since 

 been collected. 



The results will be shared among: the Museums of the 



