380 
Letters, Announcements, S^c. 
doubtedly the male and female of the one species; and I am 
very sorry that I stated so positively {cf. P. Z. S. 1877, p. 107) 
that they were not. 1 mnst^ however, plead in extenuation 
that, when my attention was drawn to the question, I re¬ 
quested the young man (Cockerell) whom I employed as 
collector to examine each bird carefully; and he assured me 
most positively that he had done so, and had marked speci¬ 
mens of each as male and female. As I now, however, skin 
all the birds myself, I think you may depend on both sex 
and locality being in every specimen properly marked.^^] 
9tli May, 1878. 
Sirs, —In May 1877 I wrote to you {vide ^Ibis,^ 1877, 
p. 397) respecting an immature Falcon captured off Socotra, 
and living in the Menagerie of the Zoological Society, which 
had been supposed to be an example of Falco peregrinator 
{vide abis,^ 1877, p. 149). 
I again inspected this specimen about a week since, and 
found that its assumption of adult plumage is now so far ad¬ 
vanced, especially on the breast, as to leave no doubt of the 
bird being a male of Falco peregrinus, and not referable to 
any of the nearly-allied species from which it was difficult to 
distinguish it in immature plumage. 
I am yours &c., 
J. H. Gurney. 
London, 30th May, 1878. 
Sirs, —Through the kindness of Mr. Salvin I have had an 
opportunity of examining the type of Bradypterus platyurus 
of Swainson, which is now in the Museum of the University of 
Cambridge. Dresser, in his ^Birds of Europe^ (March 1876), 
in his article on Cetti^’s Warbler, expresses the opinion, after 
critically examining and comparing Swainson^s type of 
Bradypterus platyurus, that there is not a shadow of 
doubt that it is nothing but Cetti’s Warbler.As this spe¬ 
cimen was the bird on which Swainson founded the genus 
Bradypterus, the correctness of its identification becomes a 
matter of some importance. Ornithological statute law pro- 
