May 12—Am preparing to leave' Shanghai a short spell, and glad to say I have at en one of the most beautiful of our sum-visitors, Years ago I gave the date of arrival of this Flycatcher as May 4, so I am not so badly out when I sighted it this year on May 11—just one week late. To show how easily an forget things, I will describe what happened. I was walking out at Jessfield, when a long white body skimmed out of a tree and flew before me close to the ground, as a Swallow. does on rainy days: it had a peculiar undulating motion and the upper tail feathers were spread out, fanwise, as if to give the body balance. I was puzzled trying to think what this avian curiosity could be: the wings were invisible from the angle at which I looked, and it gave me the impression that if.an ordinary bird can be described in shipping lange uage as a "side wheeler," this was a destroyer of great speed proceeding under the impetus of a screw propeller. Now, to make this story
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.