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Show 822 LETTER FROM DR. G. HARTLAUB. [Nov. 14, the curious long quill-feather is a supernumerary one. It is inserted, as Swainson very accurately remarks, immediately between the primary and secondary quills, and the naked basal or insertional part of it is curiously curved. The apical webs of these feathers are very broad, and show some broad black indistinct bands on a dark blackish ground. " N o w in Semiophorus vexillarius there is not even a trace of all this. The long ornamental wing-feather is the regular ninth quill, regularly webbed throughout, and getting more and more narrow towards the tip, where it becomes gradually very narrow ; the colour of this feather is a pale brownish grey with whitish shafts on the upperside, and of a uniform brown with the shaft brown ou the underside. The eighth quill-feather is double the length of the seventh. " Semiophorus vexillarius is a much larger bird. I give some of the relative dimensions :- S. vexillarius. M. longipennis. Long, rostr. a fr 0" 5'" 0" 3'" alee 8£ 0 6| 0 caudae 4 9 3| 0 tarsus Oil 09 " The colour of the wings is totally different in these birds, not less so than their form. In M. longipennis all the quills are alternately banded with black and rufous; there is no white on the wing of this species. But the contrary is the case in S. vexillarius : in this species the colour of the remiges is of a brilliant black ; the outer web of the first has the great middle portion white ; the basal portion of all and the apical margin of the smaller quills is pure white, as well as the tips of the larger tectrices. " The middle of the abdomen, the vent, and the under tail-coverts are pure white in S. vexillarius, while these parts are fulvous and darkly fasciated in M. longipennis. " The ground-colour of the underside of the tail is whitish in S. vexillarius, pale rufous in M. longipennis. " So much about S. vexillarius being the freshly moulted M. longipennis. It is sufficient to compare the figures of these species in Swainson's ' West African Birds' and in the ' Ibis.' It is really not necessary to compare actual specimens. An ornithologist of three days' experience will discover the truth of what we have just demonstrated. " Fine specimens of both these birds are in the Bremen collection. " By-the-by, I must say with Swainson that I cannot subscribe to the opinion that the laminae in the naked part of the long pen-feathers in M. longipennis have been rubbed or worn off. M. longipennis is a common bird in collections. Amongst dozens of specimens examined by m e I have never seen a bird where the naked parts of the shaft have shown a trace of webs. What may(?) be true in Prionites &c. is, I believe, not applicable to these Caprimulgi. " When Prof. Schlegel in the same communication pretends that |