Letter's, Announcements, fyc. 
505 
the synonymy of my ‘ Birds of South Africa 3 are entirely at¬ 
tributable to this cause; and though I shall be glad if Mr. 
Sharpe, with the unrivalled opportunities at his command, 
can purge my pages of their errors, I agree with you in re¬ 
gretting (Ibis, 1875, p. 505) that he has altogether suppressed 
the synonymy and descriptions of genera &c. in the second 
edition now being issued. 
Since Mr. Whitmee wrote his paper I have had the good 
fortune to make his personal acquaintance; and together we 
have carefully gone over the birds of Samoa, most of which 
I procured whilst staying under his hospitable roof. Of 
course the f Ornithologie Centralpolynesiens 3 of Drs. Finsch 
and Hartlaub was our textbook, and only reference; and 
the question then arises, Are the descriptions of species con¬ 
tained in it (those of Peale, Cassin, and others) original de¬ 
scriptions, or only those of the learned doctors themselves 
from specimens acquired by them ? 
The first bird that engaged our attention was the common 
Pachycephala, which Mr. Whitmee had previously sent me 
amongst other specimens. What was it ? My friend said he 
had identified it with P. icteroides ; but no mention is made, 
in the description, of the dark ashy grey of the chin and sides 
of the throat, which the Samoan bird possesses. I was in¬ 
clined to call it P. flavifrons, as a Fijian bird, found on Ovalau, 
answered sufficiently to the description of P. icteroides; but 
I was met by the “ gutture alho 33 of P. flavifrons, while all 
notice of the yellow patch near the nostrils was omitted !! 
The Fijian bird (P. icteroides ?) is not found in Samoa; nor 
is the Samoan bird (P. flavifrons ?) found in Fiji. Some of 
the Fijian species have a yellow nostril-patch; others have 
not (care must be taken not to confound it with P. graffii, 
wherein the patch is very distinct). If I am right in my 
conjecture, the Samoan bird will stand as P. flavifrons 
(Peale), and the description in the f Ornithologie 3 must be 
amended by the substitution of cc lor is nitide flavis 33 for “gut¬ 
ture alho. 3 3 
But what is Pachycephala alhifrons (Peale) ? None of us 
here can identify it. I fancy it must be either an abnormal 
