Letters, Announcements, fyc. 463 
Northrepps, 8 September, 1874. 
Sir, —I regret to find that I appended a wrong name to an 
Egret sent by Mr. Ayres from Trans Yaal, in f The Ibis ' for 
the present year, p. 104, and No. 204 in Mr. Ayres's list. 
The species there referred to under the head of Herodias 
garzetta should have been inserted as H. intermedia, Wagl. 
I am yours, &c., 
J. H. Gurney. 
83 Carlyle Square, London, S.W. 
18th September, 1874. 
Sir, —In my paper “ On Birds from Hakodadi," published 
in f The Ibis' for April 1874, under “ 35. Eastern Bullfinch, 
Pyrrhula orient alls,” I note that I received from Mr. Blakiston 
“ a male and female without date." On reexamining these 
specimens lately, I observed that the male was typical both in 
size and colour, whereas the female was large and has a wash 
of white along the web on each side of the stem of each outer 
tail-feather. From this last character I argued that I had 
from Hakodadi a female P. cassini, Baird. 
From the Kurile Islands I have a pair of P. orientalis, 
sent me by Yon Schrenck. The male is typically coloured ; 
the female has an indistinct white patch on the underside of 
the outer rectrix. Of another pair from Hakodadi, collected 
by Mr. H. Whitely, both have more or less white on the part 
indicated, and the male has a rosy blush over the grey under¬ 
parts. At this juncture, Mr. Taczanowski, of Warsaw, sent 
me a male of the larger size, marked P. coccinea, from Ussuri. 
This has a distinct white tail-patch. To compare with this, 
Mr. Dresser kindly lent me a maleP. coccinea from Moscow. 
The latter had the red mixed with yellow, as in our common 
Bullfinch, and no signs of the white on the tail. I asked to 
borrow a female. He sent one received from Greece; and on 
the tail of this occurred a white patch, though small. This 
certainly shakes my confidence in P. cassini; and until we 
get adult males from Hakodadi, it will be impossible to say 
for certain whether my present specimen is P. cassini or a 
phase of P. coccinea, which we have evidence to show extends 
