Letters, Announcements, fyc. 
101 
whose white plumage made their home conspicuous at over 
two miles' distance. Pheasants were challenging their rivals 
or calling to their mates on the hill-side; in the paddy-fields 
which lined the narrow valley a few Herons were standing 
on one leg, and a pair of Ibises, whose plumage had greatly 
deepened in tint since autumn, were hushed by the road¬ 
side." 
Quails near Chipping Norton.— -Lord Walsingham sends us 
the subjoined extract from a letter received from the Earl of 
Ducie, dated Sarsden, Chipping Norton, Oct. 23rd, 1885 :— 
“I write to you to inform you of the unusual influx of 
Quails in this district this year. 
“ Generally, upon this estate, which is of some 8000 acres, 
I hear of one or two c bevies ' every year. As I do not shoot 
Partridges till October, and use no pointers, T rarely see a 
Quail, though I have killed two or three in the last twenty 
years well into October. This year my keeper, going out 
early in September to get a few Partridges, put up, he says, 
at least thirty Quails in one day. A day or two after he saw 
several more. I have made inquiry, and find that Quails 
have been seen and killed in unusual numbers in the district 
between Chipping Norton and Oxford. At Cirencester and 
at Evesham I have evidence of them in a similar quantity. 
A retired Indian civilian, living a few miles from here, 
and possessing the reputation of an ornithologist, has had 
several brought to him by farmers and others wishing to 
know what they were. Even on my property in the vale of 
Severn the keeper has killed one. There they are almost 
unknown. 
“ The district of which I write is the upland country of the 
Oolite, and has the highest July isotherm in the United 
Kingdom." 
Progress of Mr. H. O. Forbes. —We extract from the 
‘Pall Mall Gazette' the subjoined account of Mr. H. O. 
Forbes's progress in New Guinea:— 
“ The High Commissioner's ship ( Governor Blackall,' 
