OCR Text |
Show 836 MR. F. E. BEDDARD ON THE [Nov. 17, opportunity of exhibiting a specimen of Saxicola deserti, the second recorded British-killed example, which had been shot between the village of Easington and the hamlet of Kilusca near to Spurn Head, on the 17th of October this year. It was at once sent to Mr. Clarke, but it was tailless and so much shot that it was impossible to determine the sex by dissection. Mr. Clarke mentioned, in order to show that at the time the bird was shot there was a considerable immigration to our shores, that a few Woodcocks, numbers of Goldcrests, Robins, Wrens, and Thrushes, and a few Owls had arrived at Spurn Head on the previous night or in the early morning of the same day. Mr. Dresser had no hesitation in referring this specimen to Saxicola deserti in spite of the lack of the tail, which was a distinguishing character, and it was evidently a female, as would be seen by comparison with carefully sexed specimens of the Desert Chat also on the table. Prof. Bell exhibited a specimen of Balanoglossus collected by Mr. Spencer at Herm. This was stated to be the first recorded example of this Hemichordate from any part of the British seas. The following papers were read :- 1, Notes on the Visceral Anatomy of Birds. No. 1.-On the so-called Omentum. By P R A N K E. B E D D A R D ^ M.A., F.R.S.E.j Prosector to the Society. [Received October 1, 1885.] All naturalists are by this time pretty well agreed upon the close affinities which birds present in their organization to reptiles ; and while it is the general view that of all existing reptiles, Crocodiles are those which most nearly approach birds, it is almost equally an accepted view that of all existing birds the Struthiones present by far the greatest number of analogies to reptiles in their anatomical structure. There are undoubtedly facts in the anatomy of the Strufhionidse which appear to favour such a view ; but an increased knowledge of the structure of other orders of birds has tended to show, firstly that many of the peculiarities of the Ostrich-tribe in which they are supposed to approach reptiles, are in reality correlated with the loss of flight and the consequent change in the relation of the different parts of the shoulder-girdle and so forth, or are not peculiarities at all, but crop up in other orders of birds. Secondly, reptilian characters not found in the Struthiones are found in other orders of birds, as in the palate of the Woodpeckers (Saurognathse), which Prof. Parker considers to present some close points of resemblance to that of reptiles. Before contributing some few additions to our information on the visceral anatomy of birds, which appear to me to still further break |