19 JULY 1873, Page 15

GOOD INTENTIONS.

(TO Tail EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]

Stn,—In your paper of the 14th ult., you say, concerning the Tichborne case, "We do not see how the short summaries of the general effect of the evidence which most of the penny papers give daily can be regarded as anything but a kind of comment, and a very dangerous kind of comment, on the evidence, and therefore we omit anything of the kind ourselves,"—a commend- able resolution ; but is it not more than broken in the following passage, which occurs in last week's number? "Mr. Adams tells us of swifts which, after eight months' absence in the South—at a distance of time 1,800 or 1,900 miles—return not merely to the same region, but to the same nests which they had deserted, and that, too, year after year,—the individuals having been marked so that there could be no mistake as to their identity, unless, indeed, there be such creatures as Claimants to abandoned nests even in the ornithological world."—I am, Sir, &c., JOHN HUGHES.

[Mr. Hughes does not appear to see that Claimants may be -either honest or dishonest Claimants, and that nothing in our 'remark suggests one kind rather than the other.—En. Spectator.]