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Show 1889.] PROF. BELL ON BTPALIUM KEWENSE. 5 « As a general remark about the Gnus, I will add that these animals are perfectly hardy and stand all the damp, cold, and snow of a Dutch winter without the slightest difficulty, protected as they are by a woolly coat which in autumn grows under their ordinary hair. They are also very precocious, as the females produce offspring before entering into their third year. Thus, for instance, I have this year bred a young one from a female aged twenty-two months only, and she reared it. To lovers of nature nothing is more interesting than a field with a herd of these animals running and gamboling in the most frantic manner, on which occasions the ridiculous-looking light-coloured little calves generally take the lead. Their wonderful activity and eccentric movements joined to their comparatively heavily built frame are always fresh sources of surprise, and forcibly remind one of Harris's allusion to the Gnu, namely, 'the most whimsical of nature's vagaries." He could not have expressed himself better! " Yours &c, " F. E. BLAAUW." Professor Newton, V.-P., exhibited a specimen of the so-called Pennula millsi, remarking :- " By the kindness of my friend Mr. Scott B. Wilson I am able to show you to-night one of the five known specimens of the bird described by Judge Dole in his ' List of Birds of the Hawaiian Islands,' reprinted from the 'Hawaiian Annual' for 1879 (p. 14), under the name of Pennula millsi \ and believed to be extinct. Mr. Wilson tells me that all these specimens were obtained some thirty years ago by the late Mr. Mills, and that no one has since been able to meet with the species ; but knowing the skulking habits of so many of the smaller Rails and Crakes, as well as the very local distribution of many of the birds of the Sandwich Islands, I think it quite possible that the species may still exist, though undoubtedly it has been frequently sought in vain. As Mr. Sclater has already pointed out (Ibis, 1880, p. 241), this is doubtless the so-called 'wingless bird' of Mr. Pease (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1862, p. 145); but I must add that in almost every respect it appears to me to agree with the 'Dusky Rail' of Latham (Synopsis, iii. pt. 1, p. 237), upon which was founded the Rallus obscurus of Gmelin (Syst. Nat. i. p. 718)-a bird not since recognized, so far as I can discover. The identification of the two species, if it can be made, I leave to the discrimination of Mr. Wilson when he comes to work out the fine collections he has made in the Hawaiian Kingdom." Prof. Bell stated that he had that morning received a letter from a gentleman at Manchester, in which he was informed that Bipalium kewense had been observed to eat earthworms. A similar fact had 1 Accidentally misprinted millei. |