508 
Letters, Announcements , fyc. 
printing till his return from China. The name only was 
printed in a catalogue of the birds of his Ussuri voyage as 
early as 1870. 
“ Accordingly, my name, printed 1870, TaczanowskTs de¬ 
scription, published in 1873, my application of my name to 
his description, 1874, and Mr. Swinhoe's description and figure, 
1875, all apply to the same bird. This shows also the range 
of the bird in the breeding-season :—Darasun, in Dauria, fe¬ 
male and eggs, summer, 1868 (Dy bow shy) ; Ussuri (Prjevalslci ), 
a male, summer, 1868 ; Chefoo, North China ( Swinhoe ), May 
1873.” 
This would certainly appear to show that Dr. Severtzoff's 
name for this Crake has priority over mine; but you have 
drawn my attention to the fact that the bird had been pre¬ 
viously described by me in the Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 4, 
xii. p. 376 (Nov. 1873); and I now recollect that before leaving 
Chefoo I sent a note of my novelties to the f Annals/ and on 
my return to England, forgetting all about having done so, I 
wrote an article on the birds met with at Chefoo for f The 
Ibis/ redescribing some of the novelties, without ever refer¬ 
ring to what had already been published in the c Annals/ 
I can only attribute my forgetfulness to trouble I had to go 
through at the time, if that be sufficient excuse. I certainly 
deserve to lose the priority of naming this bird ; but the laws 
of nomenclature are on my side. A Thrush I described at 
the same time in the f Annals ' as Turdus campbelli, I de¬ 
scribed again in f The Ibis' as T. chrysopleurus. Severtzoff 
now shows me this is T. pelios, Bp. Hemipodius chryso- 
stomus, also described in the same * Annals/ p. 375, I have 
since made out to be only the summer plumage of Turnioc 
maculosa, Vieill. Thus the only novelty left to me is Por- 
zana eocquisita; and I presume I may claim a right to that. 
Yours &c., 
Robert Swinhoe. 
