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Show 332 LETTER FROM MR. W. H. HUDSON. [May 26, a good species, identifying it with the black variety of the Common Hamster, Cricetus vulgaris, Desm., mentioned by several authors, and among them by Pallas, who (Zoogr. R.-As. i. pp. 161, 162) says of Caucasian examples, " corpus subtus saepe griseo-contami-natum et maculae laterales ad collum minus evidenter albae." Upon this, iu the following year, Prof. Brandt communicated to the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg a fuller description of the animal*, maintaining its specific validity and promising a figure of it, which, though spoken of four years later by Prof, von Nordmannf, was, I suspect, never published. This naturalist adds that the species (the value of which he does not question) lives also " sur les montagnes de l'Awhasie" [Abasia]. About the same time Drs. Keyserling and Blasius included the species in their excellent hook J, but did not increase our knowledge of it. Three years later, Wagner, in the work already mentioned, recognized it without doubt as a good species; and the matter, if even then questionable, must be considered to have been finally set at rest by a subsequent contribution, in 1854, from Prof. Brandt to the St. Petersburg Academy, wherein § he described and showed by figures the cranial and dental differences existing between C. nigricans and C. vulgaris. The validity of the species being thus finally established, I think its occurrence so far to the westward of any previously recorded habitat may interest some members of the Society. I have only to add that Mr. Buckley informs m e that his example was " one of a pair killed on the 27th of April, 1869, in a corn-fieid (the corn being about four inches high) at Shitangik, a station on the Varna and Rustchuk railway, in Bulgaria," and that " the animals were very slow in their movements." May 26, 1870. G. R. Waterhouse, Esq., V.P., in the Chair. A fourth letter || on the ornithology of Buenos Ayres, addressed the Secretary by Mr.W. H. Hudson, C.M.Z.S., was read:- " Buenos Ayres, " March 17, 1870. " M Y D E A R S I R , - O n the 9th of this month we were visited by a terrible storm, which lasted three days, a cold and violent southwest wind prevailing. After it had subsided, I could not but notice * Bull. Acad. Sc. St. Petersbourg, i. (1836) p. 42. t Voy. Demidoff, Zoologie, i. p: 42. Paris: 1840. \ Wirbelth. Eur. (Braunschweig, 1840), pp. ix, 35. § Bull. Phys. Math. Acad. Sc. St. Petersbourg, xiv. (1854) pp. Ib2-184. || See antea, p. 158. |