Letters, Extracts from Correspondence, Notices, fyc. 239 
birds, including a Saltator, Planesticus, Cyphorhinus, Polioptila, 
Buarremon, Thalassidroma, Spermophila, &c.” 
Mr. Salvin writes from San Jose, in Guatemala (December 7, 
1862), as follows:— 
" I have all the collections of the wet season to send off this 
month; there are several additions amongst them. I have got 
the nest of the Swift I described to you in a former letter. Fancy 
a nest made of seeds of a grass, glued to the under horizontal 
surface of an overhanging rock, two feet long, with entrance at 
the end ! Ido not feel sure of the genus; it is not a Chcdura, 
but more like a Panyptila. Perhaps, if new, sancti jeromae 
might be an appropriate name for it. Since I last wrote, I have 
had a collection of three hundred birds fr6m the Pacific coast: 
it contains a few additions, but no novelties, unless it be a Hum¬ 
ming-bird ; but this, I expect, is the Amazilia cyanura of Gould, 
whose specimens are from Realejo. It is a green Amazilia , with 
a steel-blue tail. During the last month I have done nothing 
in natural history, having been much occupied photographing 
the ruins at Copan. In this respect I have been more success¬ 
ful than formerly, and have brought away four dozen pictures of 
the various carvings found there. The ruins are most curious/* 
It would appear that the Tooth-billed Pigeon of the Samoan 
Islands (. Didunculus strigirostris) , which is of so great interest to 
naturalists, as being believed to be the nearest living ally of the 
Dodo, is not quite extinct, as has been said to be the case. It 
will be recollected that examples of this bird have hitherto only 
reached scientific observers on two occasions. The first of these 
was the specimen originally described by Sir William Jardinein 
the f Annals and Magazine of Natural History/ and afterwards 
figured by Mr. Gould in his f Birds of Australia^ (vol. v. pi. 76). 
The second was upon the occasion of the visit of the United 
States Exploring Expedition to the island of Upolu, when two 
examples of this Pigeon were procured, as described by Mr. 
Cassin in his volume on the Zoology of that expedition (p. 281). 
It has been repeatedly stated that this curious bird has of late 
