OCR Text |
Show 1874.] MR. J. E. HARTING ON THE CHILIAN LAPWING. 449 This letter is superscribed :- " To ye right woor m y most Louinge brother Sr Edward Altham Dwelling at marke hall in Essex " Per a frend whome god preserue. "Leaue this at one william watson's House in ye minories a gunsmith to be sente as aboue saide./" As to the genuineness of these letters there can be no suspicion. Dr. Wilmot tells me that they form part of a correspondence between various members of the Altham family which a few years ago came into his charge as executor to the will of a lady connected with that family, that they have doubtless been always in safe keeping, and that they have never been in the hands of a dealer. The two letters mentioning the Dodo have been shown by m e to m y friend Mr. Bradshaw, the Librarian of the University of Cambridge, well known as a skilful palaeographer, who, from the evidence of the handwriting, paper, and other indicia, chiefly appreciated by experts, declares them to be of the period to which their dates assign them. Whether this Dodo reached England alive there is nothing to show. The only letter in the correspondence from Edward Altham to Emanuel is dated 3 January, 1628, or six months before the bird was shipped from Mauritius. Emanuel died in the fort of Armagon, on the coast of Coromandel, in 1635, having, in his last illness, had "all his p'ticular bookes of accompts and many other wrightings" burnt in his presence, as testified by a document to that effect, signed by four witnesses and now in the collection. I cannot find the name of Altham among the " Principall Benefactors " to the ' Musseum Tradescantianum' (1656), where Herbert's name, on the contrary, does occur; but, as is well known, Sir Hamon Le Strange saw a live Dodo exhibited in London about 1638, and by 1634 a specimen had been given to the Anatomy School at Oxford*. 8. O n the Lapwing of Chili. B y J. E . H A R T I N G , F.L.S., F.Z.S. [Received June 15, 1874.] During the past few months a considerable number of specimens of the Lapwing of Chili, chiefly collected by Mr. Reed, have passed through m y hands; and a tolerably good series is now before me. On comparing these specimens with others from different localities on the eastern side of South America, as Cayenne, Bahia, and Rio, a marked difference is observable between them in point of size, the western bird being so very much larger and more robust than the eastern form. Fanellus cayennensis, Gmelin, from Cayenne, was described by him as " Fanello minor ;" and if it is not invariably less than Fanellus cristatus, with which he compared it, the specimens * Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. (ser. 2) iii. pp. 136, 137. |