214 Letters, Extracts from Correspondence, Notices, §c. 
ably muscular/ In the same work (p. 180) I remarked of the 
Falcunculi, that f they are nearly Tits, with a somewhat Shrike¬ 
like bill, and resemble our common Pari in their manners, 
notes, nidification, eggs, and plumage/ Others have since come 
over to the same opinion. 
“ In my Catalogue of the specimens of Stuffed Birds in the 
Asiatic Society’s Museum, Calcutta (1852), I placed Panurus 
at the tail of the Fringillidee (p. 134), under the heading of 
1 Incertce sedis. } 
“ Permit me further to inform you that our late most sin¬ 
cerely lamented friend William Yarrell was about to perpe¬ 
trate, through his artist, a most thoroughly detestable figure 
of Panurus biarmicus, carefully and minutely copied from a 
villainously stuffed specimen, when I happened to call upon 
him just in the very nick of time, and gave him an off-hand 
sketch of about the genuine outline, which appears (in his third 
edition) in vol. i. p. 406 : only the tail is not quite long enough, 
nor the tarsi; and that shadow of a shade of the moustache is, 
of course, a mistake, such as non-naturalist artists are so ex¬ 
tremely prone to indulge in. 
“ Of course you know that the late Prince Bonaparte described 
a second race of the Panurus genus from Kamtschatka, in one of 
his papers in the f Comptes Rendus’—about such a form as our 
friend Charles Darwin would designate an f incipient ’ species. 
“ I observe in p. 353 that Mr. Powys remarks of the Gadwall 
Duck, that it is ‘ by far the best for the table of the European 
Anatidce / I have digested several Gadwalls this season, and I 
don’t think that he is very far from wrong; but the best of all 
the Duck tribe, so far as my experience goes, is decidedly Fuli- 
gula rufina. Much, of course, depends upon the cookery: too 
often, as the poet tells us, f cooks come from t’other place!’ 
But a fine fleshy Red-crested Pochard, just done to a turn, and 
not overdone, must be equal to the finest ‘ Canvas-back ’ that 
ever was roasted. To say the least, I cannot conceive the possi¬ 
bility of anything of the sort being finer ! I undoubtedly am a- 
bit of an epicure in a quiet way, and have just been feasting off 
Glossy Ibis. Take my word for it, a roasted Falcinellus igneus 
is anything but contemptible fare. 
