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Letters, Extracts, and Notes . 
XXXIII.— Letters, Extracts , and Notes. 
We have received the following letter addressed “ To the 
Editors of ‘ The Ibis * ” :— 
Sirs, —With reference to Mr. D. A. BannermaAs notes 
on Pytelia nitidula Ibis/ 1910, p. 681), it may interest 
him, and other readers of the Journal, to know that 
there is a pair of that species in this Museum, obtained 
recently by Mr. H. M. Millar on the outskirts of the 
town. They are well mounted and in good plumage. 
On comparing them with the plate and descriptions given 
by Mr. Bannerman based upon British East African 
examples, they appear to differ in the following respects:— 
Male. The chest is olive-green, only a little lighter than 
the back, and without the wash of scarlet, or orange as it 
appears in the figure. The upper tail-coverts are of a more 
golden olive than the back, but they are not cinnamon-brown 
as depicted in the plate. Dimensions :—Total length 4 inches, 
wing 2, tail 1*4, tarsus *6. 
Female. The chest is pale olive-green with a scarcely 
perceptible suffusion of buff, very different from that of the 
female as shown in the plate. Dimensions :—Total length 
4 inches, wing 2, tail 1*2, tarsus ’6. 
From these facts it would appear that the northern form 
of this bird can hardly be considered identical with 
P. nitidula, if Durban examples are taken as typical of 
the latter. 
I am. Sirs, yours &e., 
E. C. Chubb. 
Durban Museum, Natal, 
22nd July, 1911. 
Report on the British Museum, 1911.—The usual (C Return” 
to Parliament of the British Museum for 1910 states that 
the acquisition in the Class Aves ^ in that year amounted 
to 9377 specimens. Of these the most noteworthy were as 
follows : — 
Six Harlequin Ducks ( Cosmonetta histrionica ) in eclipse 
plumage : 16 birds from Co. Sligo, Ireland, including the 
