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Show 648 MR. P. L. SCLATER ON PAUXIS GALEATA. [D December 14, 1880. Prof. Flower, LL.D., F.R.S., President, in the Chair. The Secretary read the following report on the additions to the Society's Menagerie during the month of November 1880:- The total number of registered additions to the Society's Menagerie during the month of November was 116, of which 3 were by birth, 39 by presentation, 67 by purchase, 3 were received on deposit, and 4 by exchange. The total number of departures during the same period, by death and removals, was 133. The most noticeable additions during the month of November were as follows :- 1. Two Matamata Terrapins (Chelys matamata), purchased November 26th. Only two examples of this singular Tortoise have been previously received. 2. A Uniform Water-snake (Fordonia unicolor), purchased November 29th, and new to the collection. This Snake was captured in the Hoogleyby a man round whose leg it had clung when he was in the water, and was brought home in a bottle of water. It is sluggish in habit, and appears to live constantly in the water. Mr. Sclater exhibited the skin of the brown female of Pauxis galeata, formerly living in the aviary of the late Mr. G. Dawson Rowley, F.Z.S., and alluded to in Mr. Sclater's memoir on the Curassows, published in the Society's Transactions (vol. ix. p. 285). The bird having recently died, Mr. G. F. Rowley, F.Z.S., had kindly forwarded it in the flesh to M r . Sclater. The bird had been ascertained by dissection to be a female, and was no doubt an old bird, as when Mr. G. D. Rowley wrote to Mr. Sclater on the subject in 1873 it had then been five years in Mr. Rowley's possession. There could be no doubt, therefore, that tbe adult female of this Curassow did not always assume the black plumage of the male, as had been observed to be the case in ceitain specimens. Mr. Sclater also exhibited the trachea of the above-mentioned specimen, which was of a short and simple form instead of presenting the complications well known to occur in the male (cf. Temminck's Pig. et Gall. vol. iii. pl. iv. fig. I). Dr. Giinther, F.R.S., read a paper on some rare Reptiles and Batrachians now or lately living in the Society's Menagerie. The species spoken of were Chelys fimbriata, Metopoceros cornutus, Teius rufescens, and Ceratophrys ornata. This paper will be published in the Society's * Transactions.' The following papers were read:- . |
