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Show 554 SCLATER ON BIRDS OF THE NEOTROPICAL REGION. [Jlllie 17, is shrunk and depauperized in North Asia, Europe, and North America, becomes at once intelligible, if we suppose that India and South Africa had but a scanty mammalian population before the Miocene immigration, while the conditions were highly favourable to the new comers. It is to be supposed that these new regions offered themselves to the Miocene Ungulates, as South America and Australia offered themselves to the cattle, sheep, and horses of modern colonists ; but after these great areas were thus peopled came the glacial epoch, during which the excessive cold, to say nothing of depression and ice-covering, must have almost depopulated all the northern parts of Arctogaea, destroying all the higher mammalian forms, except those which, like the Elephant and Rhinoceros, could adjust their coats to the altered conditions." June 17, 1873. The Viscount Walden, F.R.S., President, in the Chair. Mr. Sclater laid before the meeting the first sheets of a catalogue of the birds of the Neotropical Region, prepared by himself and Mr. Salvin, and shortly about to be published, under the title ' Nomenclator Avium Neotropicalium.' The subjoined list shows the proposed arrangement, which had been based on Prof. Huxley's new classification; and the numbers appended to each order gave the number of species of the order known to the authors as occurring in the Neotropical Region, which thus appeared to contain not less than 3565 species :- Subordo I. AVES CARINATAE. Series Mgithognathina. 1. Passeres ...1976 2. Macrochires 444 3. Pici 116 Series Besmoynathina. 5. Psittaci 142 6. Striges ,.,.. 37 7. Accipitres ... 114 8. Steganopodes 17 9. Herodiones... 44 10. Anseres 64 Series Schizognathina. 11. Columba? 66 12. Gallina; 90 13. Opisthocomi ... 1 14. Geranomorpha-*. 57 16. Gavite 53 17. Pygopodes . . 9 Series Bromceogn athin a. 19. Crypturi 36 Subordo II. AVES RATITAE." 20. Apteryges, 0. 21. Struthiones, 3. During the revision of his collection, effected while this list was in preparation, Mr. Sclater had found it necessary to make numerous alterations in the nomenclature and arrangement of his Catalogue of |