Birds. 5275 



then, and not till many years after, in Norway, had I the pleasure of 

 watching him in his wild state, as I have more fully detailed in my 

 notes on the Ornithology of that country (Zool. 2945) ; but I brought 

 home a skin of this bird from Switzerland nevertheless, which I pro- 

 cured from a great hunter and bird-collector, named Herr Nager- 

 Donazian, at A^ndermatt, on the S. Gothard Pass ; and here I will take 

 occasion to remark, that, for a collector of objects of Natural History 

 in almost any branch, a more excellent place for head-quarters can 

 scarcely be named than Andermatt : if he be a geologist and mineralo- 

 gist, the S. Gothard Pass is renowned for the variety and value of some 

 of the specimens it produces; if he be an ornithologist, a single visit 

 to M. Nager-Donazian's private museum of his own collections in that 

 district, will speak volumes of the numbers of rare birds occasionally 

 to be met with there, while the botanist and entomologist will find an 

 ample field for their exertions, and all the while they may pursue their 

 avocations amidst most grand scenery, in close vicinity to the cele- 

 brated Furca and Grimsel, or the glorious S. Gothard, the Ober-alp, 

 and the valley of the Reuss. 



Tichodroma phcenicoptera (Tichodrome echelette). I am indebted 

 to my friend Mr. Alfred Newton (well known for his ornithological lore 

 to the readers of the ' Zoologist') for pointing out to me the name and 

 description of this remarkable bird by Temminck, and which, with his 

 usual indefatigable zeal, he ferreted out, after hearing my account of 

 the bird which I had on two occasions seen in Switzerland alive, and 

 many times in the collections and museums throughout the country: 

 the first occasion of my seeing it was in 1841, in the midst of the 

 grandest scenery of the Simplon Pass, on the very borders of Switzer- 

 land, when coming out of Italy. It was when emerging from one of 

 the numerous tunnels in the solid rock, near the village of Gondo, that 

 I saw what at first sight looked like a gigantic butterfly fluttering with 

 extended wings in front of a perpendicular wall of rock : when I 

 examined the bird afterwards in a collection, mounted on a perch, with 

 closed wings, it looked mean and dingy enough, with the long curved 

 slight bill of the creeper, and with a plumage of dull brown, but when 

 1 saw it with extended wings, hovering near the rocks, and fluttering 

 and dancing up and down, it presented a most gorgeous and brilliant 

 appearance, more in accordance with the vineyards and gardens of 

 Italy, which we had left, than the savage and grand scenery of the 

 high Alps, where I saw it: its sole title to beauty of colour consisted 

 in the bright red in its wings, which, as it fluttered near the face of the 

 rock, shone with something of metallic brilliancy, and wherein it bore 



