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Show PROCEEDINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS OP THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON January 6, 1880. Prof. Flower, LL.D., F.R.S., President, in the Chair. Prof. Newton, M.A., F.R.S., V.-P., drew the attention of the meeting to a specimen of Chcetura caudacuta (the "Needle-tailed Swallow" of Latham, Synops. Suppl. ii. p. 259), which had been intrusted to him for exhibition by M r . Gr. B. Corbin, of Ringwood, near which place it had been shot on the 26th or 27th of July last. About the middle of that month Mr. Corbin saw one evening two strange birds flying over the river Avon in company with Swifts, and in the course of the following week had better opportunities of observing at least one of them. A few days after M r . Corbin held in his hand the bird now exhibited, which had been shot in the meantime, and was, he had no doubt, one of those he had previously watched. Prof. Newton stated that this example was the second of the species known to have been obtained in this country-the first having been shot in July 1846, near Colchester (Zool. p. 1492), and examined, before it was skinned, by the late Mr. Yarrell and other naturalists of authority. The species was described by Latham from a specimen procured in N e w South Wales; and for a long time Australia was thought to be its habitat. By degrees ornithologists learned that it was only a regular visitant to that country from its real home in Eastern Siberia, where it was first discovered by Steller, while Pallas, not knowing it was identical with Latham's Hirundo caudacuta, redescribed it (Zoogr. R.-As. i. p. 541) under the name of H. ciris. It has since been recorded from Nepaul, Sikkim, and PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1880, No. I. 1 |