• Letters, Extracts, Notices, <5fc. 525 
tliat Kitter von Tscbusi should have ventured to re-name the 
British Dipper. 
I shoukl like to point out that Dr. Sharpe^ in the ' Cata- 
logue of Birds,' vol. vi. p. 309 (1881), had already stated 
^' that to the experienced eye the English specimens form an 
easily recognisable race '' ; and that at Tring we have long ago 
appreciated the differences. If Dr. Sharpe were re-writing 
the above-cited volume, I feel sure that he also would now 
allow the British Dipper^s right to a new name ; for, after 
all, Hitter von Tschusi, by giving a subspecific name to this 
bird, is only expressing in a different and more concise way 
what Dr. Sharpe wrote twenty-one years ago. 
' Yours &c., 
Zoological Museum, Tricg, Herts. Walter BoTHSCHlLD. 
29th April, 190t2. 
Sirs, — 'You conclude one of your notices in your last 
number (above, p. 351) with the words ^' What was the 
Cahow ? " I thought this question had been answered 
half a century ago ! I have never heard a doubt about it 
expressed by any ornithologist who knew anything of the 
Bermudas. I lived myself in the islands from 1846 to 1849. 
In 1847 I wrote to the late Sir W. Jardine, stating that from 
what the fishermen had told me of the Cahow (w^hich was 
well known to them) I believed that it would prove to be 
one of the Petrels (Jard. Contr. to Ornith. 1849, p. 79). I 
afterwards, in company with the late Sir J. Campbell Orde, 
obtained specimens of the bird and some of its eggs near 
the Cooper Islands. The late Col. H. M. Drummond-Hay 
and Lt -Col. Wedderburn also procured specimens of it, as 
did Mr. Hurdis. No doubt there are even now a few pairs 
still lingering about the home of their ancestors. I observe 
that Mr. Verrill has misquoted Mr. Hurdis, who says that 
the Shearwater, Puffinus obscurus (with which P. auduhoni 
is rightly identified by Mr. Salvin), is still known by the 
fishermen as '^ the Cahow.^^ See also Jones, ^Naturalist 
in Bermuda/ p. 94. In 1874 Capt. Reid, R.E., found a 
