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Show 1881.] MR. A. G. MORE ON SOME IRISH BIRDS. 409 March 15, 1881. 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 February 1881:- The total number of registered additions to the Society's Menagerie during the month of February was 60, of which 1 was by birth, 24 by presentation, 23 by purchase, 2 by exchange, and 10 were received on deposit. The total number of departures during the same period, by death and removals, was 95. The most noticeable additions during the month of February were as follows : - 1. A female Bactrian Camel (Camelus bactrianus), formerly belonging to Ayoub Khan, which Col. O. H. St. John, F.Z.S., has purchased from its capturers at Kandahar and presented to the Society. 2. A male "Wild Sheep, obtained from Afghanistan, and presented to the Society by Capt. W . Cotton, F.Z.S. I had at first registered this animal as Ovis cycloceros, not knowing where else to refer it, although it obviously deviated somewhat in the more open and backward curvature of the horns from the ordinary character of that species. But Mr. Blanford has pointed out to me that it clearly belongs to the Afghan form of this species, lately described and figured by Mr. H u m e as Ovis blanfordi1. Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe exhibited a specimen of the so-called Sabine's Snipe {Scolopax sabinii, Vigors), which had been shot by the Hon. W . W . Palmer, at Woolmer Pond, near Selbourne, Hants. This form was now well understood to be a melanoid variety of the Common Snipe (Gallinago scolopacina). Mr. A. G. More exhibited some eggs of the Red-necked Phala-rope {Phalaropus hyperboreus), believed to have been taken in England, and an egg of the Tree-Pipit (Anthus arboreus), taken near Dublin, this bird having been considered only doubtfully Irish. Mr. More also exhibited a specimen of the Red-crested Pochard (Fuligula rufina), obtained near Tralee, being the first instance on record of the occurrence of this species in Ireland. The following papers were read :- 1 J. A. S. B. xlvi. pt. 2, p. 327 (1877). PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1881, No. XXVII. 27 |