ry 
Letters, Announcements, &c. 277 
than by actual contact with the soil. From the above ex- 
periments, therefore, I presume that a like cause produces 
the same effect of colouring in the case of some Whoopers 
and Bewick’s Swans, and on the breasts of some species of 
Ducks. 
Yours faithfully, 
H. STEVENSON. 
Norwich, Feb. 18th, 1876. 
Turin, February 26th, 1876, 
Zoological Museum. 
S1xr,—Lord Walden, in his edition of Blyth’s “ Birds of 
Burmah”’ (Journ. As. Soc. Beng. xlin. pt. 2, p. 126), speak- 
ing of my Cymborhynchus malaccensis, says that he supposes 
that I have satisfied myself about the type of Latham’s Great- 
billed Tody having a black tail, without white spots. It seems 
that his Lordship has overlooked that in my paper on the 
genus Cymborhynchus (Atti R. Ac. Sc. Torino, ix. p. 418) I 
have said that, from a letter of Herr von Pelzeln, to whom I 
had applied for information, I learnt that the type of La- 
tham’s species, still preserved in the Museum of Vienna, has 
not its own tail. Such being the case, I thought that we could 
safely refer to Latham’s species the specimens with the tail 
complelely black, as such have been described by subsequent 
writers (Raffles, Wagler, and others) ; and, besides, I think 
that Latham would have perceived the white spots on the 
tail had he described a specimen of my C. malaccensis. 
I take this opportunity of mentioning that having just 
received the first two parts of Gould’s ‘ Birds of New Guinea,’ 
I have been rather surprised to find Ptiladela boyeri (G. R. 
Gr.) figured under the name of Campephaga strenua, Schleg., 
which is a much larger bird, and also otherwise different. I 
will also mention that Diphyllodes speciosa must stand as D. 
magnifica, as Pennant gave to this bird the name of Para- 
disea magnifica (Faunula indica in Forster’s Zool. Ind. p. 40) 
(ex D’Aubent, Pl. Enl. 631) in 1781, two years before Bod- 

















