187 
Letters , Announcements , fyc. 
really travel by post all the way from Andai to Berlin ?) The 
supposed new bird is obviously the same as Drepanornis al - 
bertisi, discovered by d'Albertis at Atam, in the Arfak moun¬ 
tains in September 1872, received in London on June 17, 
1873, and described the same evening at the Zoological So¬ 
ciety's meeting*. Now when Dr. A. B. Meyer arrived in 
Vienna in October last, he wrote to me for information con¬ 
cerning this bird, and I immediately sent him a copy of the 
article in ‘ Nature' in which it is described and figured. He 
had therefore ample time to have cancelled his redescription 
sent to the f Journal fur Ornithologie,' and ought to have done 
so. Its appearance at this late date, without reference to 
D'Albertis's discovery, requires explanation, failing which it 
can only be regarded as an attempt to obtain an unfair 
priority. 
I also learn from Hr. J. v. Rosenberg, the distinguished 
Dutch traveller, that in April 1871 he saw a single female 
specimen of this same Paradise-bird in the collection of Mr. 
D. van Duivenbode, Jr., at Ternate, and had proposed to call 
it Epimachus veithii , in a work on his travels in the Eastern 
Archipelago, which is now in preparation. It is singular that 
three travellers should have all so nearly at the same time 
met with traces of this hitherto unknown species. 
Signor L. M. d'Albertis has just passed through London 
on his return to Genoa from Sydney, via Levuka, Honolulu, and 
San Francisco. He has left his extensive collections here, 
and will shortly return to work them out. He tells us that 
Orangerie Bayf, where the native skins of the new Paradisea 
raggiana were obtained, is not near Salawatty, as I had sup¬ 
posed, but at the extreme S.W. point of New Guinea, in 
the district lately visited by H.M.S. ‘Basilisk.' This point 
is of great interest, as showing that each part of Papua has 
its peculiar form of Paradisea. 
Signor d'Albertis, we are glad to say, gives us a good ac- 
* See ‘ Nature,’ viii. p. 306 (August 14th), and P. Z. S. 1873, p. 560, 
pi. xlvii. 
t Not Arangesia, as misprinted by Mr. Elliot in his Monograph of 
tiie Paradise-birds. 
