562 
Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 
have examined many specimens of the form with the blue 
gorget, and have found that almost all of them had a small 
spot of white on the middle of the throat. In several of 
them this spot was scarcely larger than a pin's head, and in 
one, which had an apparently unspotted blue gorget*, I 
discovered by close examination, on moving the central 
feathers, a slight white speck. It appears to me, therefore, 
that the form with the blue gorget is merely an individual 
variety of the white-spotted bird, and not even a subspecies, and 
that the older birds have usually a larger white spot than the 
younger ones. Brehm described the unspotted Bluethroat 
in 1822 (Beitr. zur Ybgelk. ii. p. 173) as Sylvia wolfii , and 
in the following year (Lehrb. d. Naturg. i. p. 344) figured it 
with an unspotted blue gorget on the same plate as a 
specimen with a small white spot, which latter he called 
Sylvia suecica. As, therefore, I consider the bird with an 
unspotted (or apparently unspotted) blue gorget to be 
specifically inseparable from the white-spotted bird, I con¬ 
sider that they should both stand as Cyanecula wolfii (C. L. 
Brehm), 1822, and not as Cyayiecula leucocyana C. L. Brehm, 
as described by him in his ‘ Vogel Deutschlanas 5 (p. 352) in 
1831. 
I am, Sirs, yours &c., 
H. E. Dresser. 
44 Hornton Court, Kensington, W., 
20th May, 1909. 
Sirs, —The White-fronted Goose ( Anser albifrons) was 
until lately regarded as a bird of rare and irregular appear¬ 
ance in Southern Italy, where a single specimen was obtained 
in the winter of 1870, as has been mentioned by Prof. Costa. 
It has been recorded also from Tuscany and from near 
Borne. In the north-eastern districts, Lombardy and 
Venetia, the species is less rare, and of irregular appearance 
during winter months almost every year. But it does not 
seem to have occurred on the Puglie, in Calabria, or on the 
islands in the Mediterranean. Last year, however, in 
December, large flocks of this bird arrived in the Capitanata 
and the large marshes of Manfredonia, and stayed the whole 
