Letters , Extracts from Correspondence , Notices, fyc. 471 
specimens of the celebrated Balceniceps rex and its eggs. He 
informs us that this bird is met with on the upper part of the 
White Nile, 4° north of the Equator, where the country is low 
and flat, being intersected by numerous branches of the river, 
and covered with vast reedy marshes, which are overflowed in 
the wet season. The Balceniceps is here seen among the reeds, 
or stationed stork-like in shallow water, on the watch for fishes, 
upon which it principally subsists. It makes a large and untidy 
nest among the reeds. The eggs are two in number. The speci¬ 
mens brought by Mr. Petherick are of a dirty white, and covered 
with a chalk-like epidermis. They are of a broad oval, rather 
tapering towards the small end, measuring 4 inches by 3*1. 
The Arabs call this bird Abou ma/coub —the father of the shoe, 
in allusion to its enormous shoe-like bill. 
This account differs in several particulars from that given by 
M. Jules Yerreaux in the ‘ Edinburgh New Philosophical Maga¬ 
zine ' (n. s. vol. iv. p. 101 et seq.), and there can be no doubt that 
M. Verreaux was misinformed by his correspondent as to the 
position of the nest, nature of the food, and colour of the eggs. 
The following letter relates to the occurrence of Pallas's Sand- 
grouse (Syrrhaptes paradoxus) in Norfolk. No doubt it was one 
of the same flock that was observed near Tremadoc in Wales on 
the 9th of July, as recorded in ‘ The Zoologist/ and of which 
one was obtained, and is now in the Derby Museum at Liver¬ 
pool. Through the kindness of Mr. Leadbeater, we had our¬ 
selves an opportunity of examining the present specimen, which 
was a bird in fine plumage, and more darkly banded on the 
breast than is represented in the plate given in Gray and 
Mitchell's f Genera' (vol. iii. pi. 134). The native country of 
this Sand-grouse is the barren steppes of the Kirghiz Tartars; 
and I am not aware of any authentic instance of its previous 
occurrence in Europe. It was first described by Pallas in his 
f Travels' (vol. ii. App. p. Ill), and again in his 'Zoographia 
Rosso-Asiatica' (vol. ii. p. 74). A second species of this pecu¬ 
liar form has of late years been discovered in Ladakh, and is 
figured in Mr. Gould's ‘ Birds of Asia,' part ii., under the name 
of Syrrhaptes tibetanus. While agreeing with the type-species 
