720 
Letters , Extracts , and Notes. 
the Okovanga River. After being many months in the dry 
sandy bush-veldt they arrived quite suddenly in N’gami-land, 
with its wealth of tall papyrus, fine palms, and evergreen 
trees. The silent wastes of the desert were replaced by 
teeming masses of birds and animal life of all sorts. Lake 
there was none, at least not in the ordinary sense of the 
word, but there lay before them a vast swamp bordered on 
the south by the dry Kalahari, and on the north by a most 
amazing and intricate system of rivers and a vast expanse of 
marshes, which are dry in summer, but are inundated with 
water from the north during the winter. The travellers are 
busy in collecting birds, mammals, and other animals, and 
hope to be able to get a complete series of the fishes of Lake 
N'gami, which are very little known, and are specially 
required at South Kensington. 
A new Fossil Bird from the Lower Pliocene. —The last 
issued Part of the ‘ Proceedings * of the Zoological Society of 
London (1909, p. 368) contains an account by Mr. W. P. 
Pycraft of the fossilized remains of a small Passerine bird 
from Gabbro, near Leghorn. After a detailed description 
Mr. Pycraft comes to the conclusion that the remains are 
those of a Pipit ( Anthus ), and resemble most nearly those of 
the living species known as BertheloPs Pipit ( Anthus 
bertheloti) of Madeira. 
Assuming that this is correct, Mr. Pycraft proposes to 
adopt the name of the discoverer—Dr. Bosniaski—as the 
specific name of this species. 
Anthus bosniaskii was obtained by Dr. Bosniaski from the 
Lower Pliocene of Gabbro, near Leghorn, a deposit which 
as yielded many fossils and which is particularly rich in 
fish-remains. 
The only other remains of Passerine birds from the Lower 
Pliocene are stated to be a few fragments, representing 
the genera Corvus and Turdus, from Rousillon, Perpignan. 
