525 
Letters , Announcements, fyc. 
shot was a straggler from Ealassan, from which island I 
think it has been recorded. A day or two previously I 
obtained a specimen of Orthorhamphus magnirostris out of a 
flock of five at Cape Scinpangmengaio. This species is 
marked with a query in Salvadori's work. I compared the 
specimen with Gould's description. 
Yours faithfully, 
Labuau, Borneo. A. Everett. 
July 15, 1886. 
P.S.—It is said by natives that Parrots, similar to those 
found in the Philippines ( Tanygnathus or Prioniturus ?), occur 
on the Mantanani Islands, a group of coral islets about 
18 miles off the N.W. coast of Borneo. 
Sirs, —There is so much with which I am disposed to agree 
in my friend Mr. Seebohm's speculations on the genesis and 
distribution of species of birds, that although I have for 
some time felt doubtful whether his views as to the effects of 
the Glacial epoch are warranted by known palaeontological 
data, I have not hitherto attempted to criticise his conclu¬ 
sions. In previous papers, for instance in those on Cursorius 
and Scolopax (antea, pp. 121,141), and also, if my memory is 
correct, in some earlier writings, the view advocated by 
Mr. Seebohm has been that the differentiation of the species 
- belonging to a genus, or to a section of a genus, dates from 
some part of the Glacial epoch. In his last paper on Himan- 
topus , however, a very much greater change within the same 
limited geological time is advocated, and a conclusion is 
adopted which appears to me very startling and, as I think 
I shall show, quite untenable. This conclusion (p. 226) is, 
that u the couple of hundred species and subspecies o| birds 
which compose the family Charadriidse " are “ the variously 
modified descendants of a species of wader which lived on the 
shores of the north polar basin some time before the close of 
the Glacial epoch." 
It is manifest from the context, coupled with the remarks 
on the family Charadriidse at p. 122, that the author of the 
