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Show 2 MR. GERARD KREFFT ON AUSTRALIAN ZOOLOGY. [Jan. 9, Mr. W. K. Parker, F.R.S., read a memoir on the osteology of the Kagu (Rhinochetus jubatus). The conclusion arrived at by Mr. Parker, from an examination of the osseous structure of this bird, was that the Kagu constituted the type of a distinct family belonging to Prof. Huxley's order Geranomorphse, and was most nearly allied to Psophia and Eurypyga. . , This paper will be published in the Society's ' Transactions. Professor Newton exhibited the humerus of a large species of Pelican from the lower peat of the Cambridgeshire Fens. _ Though in size exceeding the corresponding hone in Pelecanus onocrotalus, the condition of the extremities showed the specimen to have been that of a young bird-a fact which rendered it not unlikely that the species was an inhabitant of the locality in which the bone was found. The specimen had been submitted to the inspection of M . Alphonse Milne-Edwards by Mr. H . Seeley, of the Wood-wardian Museum at Cambridge (to which it belonged), and was ahout to be figured and described by the gentleman first named. The following papers were read :- 1. Notes on Australian Zoology. By GERARD KREFFT, F.L.S., C.M.Z.S., Curator and Secretary of the Australian M u s e u m at Sydney, N e w South Wales. It has recently been stated* that the Short-tailed "Wallaby of Western Australia (Halmaturus brachyurus) is the common species found in South-eastern Victoria • but having received one of these short-tailed specimens, shot at the Bass River in Victoria, from Professor M cCoy, I find it to be identical with the Tasmanian Halmaturus billardieri. Skull, limbs, and tail are in two specimens, the one from Tasmania, the other from Victoria, exactly alike; but the colour of the fur of the Victorian species is somewhat lighter. That this Wallaby should have been confounded with H. brachyurus is difficult to conceive, as the western species resembles in the shape of its skull and dentition the Bettongice much more than the Wallabies. In the whole group we never find so short a tail or hind foot as in H. brachyurus • and looking at the small incisor teeth, both above and below, the short lower jaw, the broad zygoma, and the strong and powerful premolar, it becomes apparent at once that this animal could not easily be mistaken for the H. billardieri, the latter having a long head, elongate tarsi, broad incisors (as large again as those of the western specimen), and a long and narrow zygomatic arch. Our best authorities, as Gilbert, Masters, and Water-house, state that H. brachyurus is peculiar to the west coast. Again Prof. M cCoy errs when he supposes that the western Tortoise (Chelodina oblonga) is found in the northern rivers of Victoria. * Prof. McCoy, " O n tbe Recent Zoology and Palaeontology of Victoria," ' Intercolonial Exhibition Essays,' 1866-67, No. 7. Melbourne: Blundell and Co. |