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Show 96 MR. P. L. SCLATER ON BIRDS FROM [Feb. 20, and other places, as well as several objects of natural history, including the white Gallinule (Fulica alba) of Lord Howe's Island. One of these drawings represents " Port Hunter," Duke-of-York Island, and, no doubt, gives a fair idea of the island as it then existed. "Several of the French expeditions visited these islands. De Bougainville1 in 1768, the year after Carteret's discoveries, spent some days at the southern end of N e w Ireland, and named the small cove at the eastern end of Gowan's Harbour «Port Praslin.' This spot was afterwards visited by Duperrey in the 'Coquille' in 1823 ; and here the only entomological collections which have hitherto reached Europe from this island were made. These were described in the Zoology of the Voyage of the ** Coquille' by Guerin-Meneviile ; and several of the butterflies are figured in the atlas of that work. " The different explorers who have visited these islands seem to have been variously impressed with them, according, perhaps, to the season of the year when they were there. All, however, extol the richness of the verdure, the extent of the forests, as well as the grandeur of the scenery of both N e w Britain and N e w Ireland ; but the climate is very humid, and the rainfall at times excessive." The following papers were read :- 1. On the Birds collected by Mr. George Brown, C.M.Z.S., on Duke-of-York Island, and on the adjoining parts of N e w Ireland and N e w Britain. By P. L. S C L A T E R, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Society. [Eeceived February 19, 1877.] (Plates XIV.-XVI.) I am now in a position to give the Society a better account of the collection of Birds made by our Corresponding Member, Mr. George Brown, in Duke-of-York Island and on the adjacent portions of N e w Ireland and N e w Britain, which I exhibited at our second meeting in January last2. Before, however, I do this, I will make a few preliminary remarks, to serve as an introduction to this and the papers to follow, which some of m y friends have been kind enough to prepare, on other branches of Mr. Brown's collections. For m y first introduction to Mr. Brown, I a m indebted to Dr. F. Miiller, the well-known botanist, of Melbourne, who wrote to m e in 1874 pointing out Mr. Brown's enthusiastic love for natural history, and recommending his election as a Corresponding Member of the Society. Mr. Brown was at that time attached to the Wesleyan Mission in the Samoan group, but shortly afterwards returned to Sydney, and was sent out as the leader of a new Wesleyan Mission at Port Hunter, Duke-of-York Island. Mr. Brown left Sydney in 1 'A Voyage round the World,' by Lewis de Bougainville, translated by John Eeinhold Forster. 4to: London, 1773. 2 See above, p. 28. |