1865.J Setentific Intelligence: 283 
what it was, if you were to see it stepping about at a distance. Em- 
phatically a snake-devourer. Two young Wapitis came to light this 
week, the daughters of the fine Californian buck! A lot of Ammoperdix 
Heyi; and different species of Pterocles. Pt. alchata (I may have told 
you) has bred, and I saw the newly hatched chick, precox of course, 
but inactive, from the shortness of its legs. The Felis macroceles and. 
two Ursus Malayanus which I brought doing well. A pair of common 
house Mainas at last ; and I wish I could see a pair of common Indian 
crows, and the two common Indian vultures, Gyps indicus and G@. 
bengalensis. Although the temperature has been extraordinarily high 
all this September, and people are panting and languishing as if they 
were in Sierra Leone, I observe with interest and considerable surprise 
that the Arctic Foxes are rapidly re-assuming their white winter coat ! 
I hear of some extraordinary discoveries up one of the great tributaries 
of the Amazons, where the few scattered human inhabitants had never 
before been visited, and were unacquainted with the use of metal, 
using stone implements; and the animals quite tame and unscared 
by man—herds of Tapirs, which would allow their coats to be rubbed 
by a stick and enjoyed the titillation. I just lost a fine thing the 
other day atStephens’s auction, a splendid skull of Bubalus brachyceros 
had been knocked down for eight shillings; and the purchaser would 
not part with it. You would otherwise have had it. 
P. S.—I have been thinking that you would do well to re-publish 
my commentary on Jerdon’s Birds of India, if you could get Jerdon 
himself to annotate it, and thus afford him a convenient opportunity, 
of making known all that he may have to add, in order to complete 
our information on the subject up to the date of publication in the 
J.A.S. I much wish to know how his book has sold, and also what 
progress he is making with the other classes of vertebrata. NV. B. 
Felis rubiyginosa of the Coromandel Coast extends to Ceylon (Cingha- 
lese specimen in Belfast Museum); and my Cinghalese Sevwrus Lay- 
ardi is in the Worcester Museum from Malabar, sent (with Presbytis 
Johnii, verus, &c.) by R. Cole of Madras. Also, in the Worcester 
Museum, a fine adult female of the rare Falco Babylonicus, alleged to 
be from Java, which I do not believe. Ihave seen a kitten of my 
Felis Jerdoni from Malabar, and I have little doubt that this jungle- 
cat there takes the place of /. rubiginosa of the Coromandel side of 
37 
