Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 673 
The Florence Museum now contains ten specimens of this 
Gull, two of which are young in down^ obtained in May last 
from the islets on the south-western coast of Sardinia. 
Yours &c., 
Cascina VeccMa, Count E. Arrigoni Degli Oddi. 
Saltino, Florence. 
28tli July, 1902. 
SiRS^ — I have been requested to write a short account of 
my visit to the Casquets Lighthouse on Tuesday^ May 13th, 
on the morning of which day a large number of birds met 
their death by striking the lantern. 
In company with two of the Elder Brethren of the 
Trinity House, I^ as a guest^ visited the Casquets in the 
Trinity yacht ^ Irene/ We left the ship in one of the boats, 
and landed on the rock at about 10 a.m. for the purpose of 
inspection. I explored the surroundings^ and found an 
enormous quantity of dead birds ; many of them were 
skeletons only, but there must have been at least two or 
three hundred that were quite fresh. Almost all were near 
the foot of the lighthouse,, and the lighthouse-keepers 
informed me that '^ early that morning a large flock of 
small birds, with a few Doves, had passed. Very few of 
the Doves had struck the lantern, as they seemed to have 
been more cautious than the small birds, a great number of 
which had met their death, for over two hundred had been 
picked up in the gallery outside the lantern.'' I found that 
all the small birds belonged to a species of Flycatcher. At 
the first casual glance T took some of them for Robins, but on 
closer inspection I at once noticed that they were all Fly- 
catchers. About a quarter, or possibly a third, of the lot had 
red breasts, and I cannot better describe them than in the 
first line of Seebohm's account of the Red-breasted Fly- 
catcher, where he says : '' This pretty little species is like a 
miniature Robin in general appearance.'' I should have said 
that the breast was a little more orange, not quite so dark 
as in the Robin, but the picture of Muscicapa parva in Lord 
Lilford's ' Birds of the British Islands ' (vol. ii. p. 88) at 
