Mr. J. E. Teschemacher on a new species o/Rafnesia. 381 



some appeared on the 9th of April at several places, but they were 

 nowhere numerous. On the 13th of that month a very few were 

 observed between Leghorn and Pisa. At Malta on the 17th they 

 were as abundant as we ever behold them in the British Islands. On 

 the passage of H.M.S. Beacon from Malta to the Morea, two swal- 

 lows flew on board on the 22nd of April, when the vessel was about 

 forty miles east of Malta ; on the 25th, when about fifty miles from 

 Calabria, several appeared; towards the evening of the next day about 

 a dozen alighted on the vessel, and after remaining all night took 

 their departure early on the morning of the 27th, when perhaps ninety 

 miles west of the Morea : throughout the afternoon and towards the 

 evening of the same day (at sunset we were about sixty miles from 

 the Morea) many more arrived, and all that came having remained, 

 they appeared about the close of day flying about the ship in consi- 

 derable numbers. 



On arrival at Navarino on the 28th, the swallow was observed to 

 be common, as it likewise was, in the following month, in the island 

 of Syra, about Smyrna and Constantinople*; in June about the 

 island of Paros, at Athens and Patras f ; in July at Venice, Verona, 

 Milan, &c. At Trieste, where I spent ten days at the end of June, 

 no swallows were observed, although house martins and swifts were 

 abundant ; my not seeing them however may have been accidental. 

 About none of the southern or eastern localities mentioned are swal- 

 lows, house martins, sand martins or swifts more numerous than in 

 the north of Ireland, or the British Islands generally J. 



In the later editions of Bewick's ' British Birds,' a highly interest- 

 ing account of the familiarity of the swallow in confinement appears 

 in a letter from the Rev. Walter Trevelyan. 



[To be continued.] 



XLI. — On a new species o/Rafflesia from Manilla. 

 By J. E. Teschemacher, Esq.§. 



[With a Plate.] 



Having just received from Manilla, preserved in spirit, se- 

 veral buds of that rare and singular parasite, Rafflesia, which 



* I never met with swallows more plentiful anywhere than they were on 

 the 16th of May, flying over some low and extremely rich pastures in which 

 some of the Sultan's stud were grazing, between Constantinople and the vil- 

 lage of Belgrade. 



f On the 14th of June, the young were all but fledged here. At this date, 

 they are in favourable seasons equally far advanced in the north of Ireland. 



X The only localities that in the midst of summer I ever remarked all 

 the HirundinidcB to be absent from, were the South Islands of Arran, off 

 Galway Bay. Not an individual of any of the species was seen here by Mr. 

 K. Ball or myself, when visiting the islands on the 7th, 8th and 9th of July 

 1834, the weather being all the time very fine. Returning from them we 

 had no sooner reached the coast of Clare — the nearest land — than many of 

 the //. rustica were observed. 



§ From the Boston Journal of Nat. History, vol. iv. p. 63. 



