[Enclosure 1]

I came across an old observation the other day which may interest you. I once shot in Norway a Common Sandpiper the nail of the hind toe of which was clasped by a bivalve freshwater shell. A suggestive mode of an accidental means of dispersal.

[Enclosure 2]

1 Trogon mexicanus is quite a distinct species from Calurus resplendens (or as it ought to be called Pharomacrus mocinno) & has no elongated tail coverts³   The only positive evidence about the breeding of Ph. mocinno I was ever able to obtain is published in the Ibis for 1861, p. 66. A friend of mine M^r R. Owen was informed of a nest in the forests near which he was staying & he sent his servant to see after it who brought back two eggs & the hen bird   The eggs were in a hole in a decayed tree to which there was only one entrance. There were no signs of a nest beyond a layer of small chips of decayed wood on which the eggs were laid.—⁴

The bird is not found in Mexico & I never heard that DeSaussure visited Guatemala & my own belief is that the story of the male sitting with its tail hanging out of one hole & looking out of another is imaginary & that very probably the male bird does not sit at all.⁵ I once however took a nest of T. mexicanus which was in a hole of a tree out of which the male bird flew.

2. Since I described Chamæpetes unicolor I have received a female specimen which has the wing primaries cut but not quite so much as in the male, and I have noticed that a very young example of Aburria carunculata has the same feature to a slight degree so that this character must not be ascribed to the males alone. I, however, only observed the males making the strange noise I described in P.Z.S.⁶

1^st Primary of Chamæpetes unicolor

It may be worthy of your notice that I do not think that the noise made by Penelope nigra was produced by the ordinary process of flight when passing from one tree to another   it struck me as if it was done “on purpose” just as a snipe “drums” at certain seasons.⁷

3. The males only of Selasphorus platycercus have the excised primary (1^st only)

neither the females Nor the young males in their first plumage possess this character. My attention was first attracted to the noise when observing a male which used to make periodical visits to some flowers in a court yard   the sound was not produced when hovering but in changing position from flower to flower & especially when flying out of the yard over the wall. It did not strike me that the sound was intentionally made to attract the attention of the females.⁸

4. Both sexes of the S American genera of Pigeons Peristera and Leptoptila. have the primaries excised but though they make a whistling noise when they fly I did not observe that sound was greater than that produced by other species of Pigeons which have not got this character.⁹

[Enclosure 3]

[Enclosure 4]

x Eugenes fulgens

During my subsequent stay in Guatemala¹⁸ I observed another female but only one so that of this species two females only came under observation though I was constantly on the look out for them in districts where the males abounded. Of the males I must have seen dozens as at certain seasons they were very abundant.—

x Thaumastura henicura   I find I made the following note respecting this species when I noted the first male specimen obtained. “Though I have, perhaps, shot as many as twenty females of this species this is the first male I have killed. It is however not uncommon.” I afterwards found a small colony of males some 6 or 7 of which searched the flowers of a row of willow trees.–