491 
Letters, Announcements, fyc. 
therefore see nothing to regret, but, on the contrary, cause for 
congratulation that the uncertainty of the authorship of this 
unfinished paper places it in the category of anonymous works, 
and renders it, in our opinion, unusable for purposes of no¬ 
menclature.—E dd.] 
Dresden, August 4, 1877. 
(R. Zoological Museum.) 
Sirs, — I described in the year 1874 (Sitz. Akad. Wien, 
lxix. p. 493) a new genus and species of Dicruridse from New 
Guinea, Chcetorhynchus papuensis . I then had overlooked a 
very characteristic large spot of white feathers on the edge 
of each shoulder; also Mr. Sharpe, who has described and 
figured the bird in his Catalogue (vol. iii. 1877, p. 242, pi. xiii.), 
does not mention these white spots. The reason why they 
have been overlooked by both of us is this, that they are con¬ 
cealed by the feathers of the mantle when the bird is looked 
at with closed wings. But just having had a specimen stuffed 
with the wings spread, the spots appeared, and could no 
longer be overlooked. I am anxious to publish this valuable 
specific character of Chcetorhynchus papuensis, because I am 
afraid, if I do not, that the same bird will soon be redis- 
cribed under a new specific name. 
Yours &c., 
A. B. Meyer. 
Northrepps Hall, Norwich. 
6th September 1877. 
Sirs, —Allow me to correct an error which I have inad¬ 
vertently made in the enumeration of the Transvaal birds 
recorded in f The Ibis 3 by Mr. Thomas Ayres. 
In f The Ibis ’ for 1876, p. 433, is the following sentence :— 
“ Mr. Ayreses previous papers on the birds of Transvaal record 
152 species, vide Ibis, 1874, p. 107.” The latter part of the 
sentence ought to have run thus,— “record 213 species , vide 
Ibis, 1874, p. 105.” 
As the result of this correction, the number of the last 
