Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 
759 
My own impression, and that of several others, w r as that 
our bird was a male, this opinion being based on the fact 
that it was practically identical in size with Whitehead’s 
type-specimen (now in the British Museum), which was 
sexed as a male. 
When our bird died it was immediately taken to the 
Prosectorium, and its entrails were removed for examination 
by the Pathologist. The latter’s assistant assured me that 
he carefully examined the bird, and that it was unquestionably 
a female-, hence the statement in my recent paper. In the 
light of the notes above given, however, I am much inclined 
to think that a mistake was made, and that our bird was a 
male, as at first supposed. Further material will doubtless 
throw light on this point. 
I am, Sirs, yours &c., 
Zoological Society’s Gardens, D. Seth-Smith. 
June 3rd, 1910. 
Sirs, —In May 1905 I exhibited at the meeting of the 
British Ornithologists’ Club (see Bull. vol. xv. p. 72) some 
fragments of fossil egg-shell which had been obtained by the 
late Mr. Archibald Carlyle when engaged on the Archaeo¬ 
logical Survey of India. When I purchased them at 
Stevens’s Auction Rooms these fragments were in a small 
tin box bearing a label “ Fossil Egg Shell ? Nullas, Kain 
River, Banda.” Mr. W. P. Pycraft supplemented my 
remarks by a short account of the result of a microscopical 
examination of the shell, which appeared to be undoubtedly 
a fragment of the egg-shell of a Struthious bird akin to the 
modern Ostriches ( Struthio ). Quite recently Dr. C. W. 
Andrews, F.R.S., has been working on some fossil eggs of 
Struthious birds, and from his microscopical examination of 
these fragments has come to the conclusion that thev are 
parts of an egg of a species of Struthio, and that in the 
distribution of the pores on the surface of the shell they 
are almost identical with eggs of the Somaliland Ostrich 
[Struthio molybdophanes), although possibly the shell is 
