116 Lettersj Announcements, 
tinge, and in the pale nearly white centre of the breast and 
throat. 
(3) Proparus dubius, Hume, I have compared with ten ex¬ 
amples, and find very close to Minla mandellii, Godw.-Anst.; 
but it is white beneath, and wants the streaked white-and- 
black feathers behind the ear-coverts, is smaller, more rufous, 
and less striate on the head. In my opinion it is a good 
representative race, in the far south, of the Assam form. It is 
a true Minla in every respect. In the same way Minla casta- 
niceps, from Tenasserim, is paler below than the specimens 
from the Assam hills. Both these local races exhibit a 
variation equal in kind and degree, which is very interesting. 
(4) Minla rufogularis, = Alcippe collaris, Walden. 
I have compared it with a large series of the latter; rufo¬ 
gularis has priority as the title. Minla mandellii is quite a 
different bird, and cannot be confounded with it. Its correct 
generic title is Minla, —H. H. G.-A, 
We have also received the six subjoined letters :— 
Boston, November 13, 1877. 
Sirs, —My young townsman, Dr. James C. Merrill, U.S.A., 
stationed at Fort Brown, Texas, continues to make interesting 
discoveries in this border region. Among these are the eggs 
of Molothrus (Bneus, which you wiU find described in full in 
the ‘ Nuttall ^ for October. They are greenish white, and so 
far are found only in nests with eggs of a similar colour^. 
Fie found last summer a colony of Ibis guarauna breeding 
in the swamps at the mouth of the Bio Grande. What he 
supposed to be Parula americana proves to be P. pitiayumi, 
a new bird to our already plethoric fauna. Neocorys spraguei, 
has been taken near Fort Brown (its most southern and 
eastern record). 
In September last Dr. Merrill found a nest which, there 
is little doubt, belonged to a pair of Amazilia cerviniventris 
inside the enclosure of Fort Brown. It was in the fork 
* [See Robert Owen’s account of the eggs of this bird, ^Ibis,’ 1861, 
p. 61 .—Edd,] 
