| OCR Text |
Show 124 THE SECRETARY ON ADDITIONS TO THE MENAGERIE. [Feb. It), The five species may be easily distinguished as follows :- ] )• Belly black. 1. C. seychellarum. (Seychelles.) 2. C. niger. (N.E. Borneo.) / 3. C. mindanensis. Belly white. (Philippine Islands.) 4. C. amcenus. Belly black. (Java, Borneo.) 5. C. saularis. Belly white. (Ceylon, India, Assam, to Malay Peninsula, and China, Andaman Islands, Sumatra, Java, Borneo.) Tail entirely black. Outer tail-feathers white. February 16, 1886. Prof. W. H. 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 January 1886 :- The total number of registered additions to the Society's Menagerie during the month of January was 97. Of these 9 were by birth, 64 by presentation, 12 by purchase, 8 by exchange, and 4 were received on deposit. The total number of departures during the same period, by death and removals, was 118. The most noticeable additions during the month were:- 1. A Many-marked Snake (Rhagerrhis multimaculata), presented by the Rev. G. H. R. Fisk, C.M.Z.S., and received January 1, 1886. Amongst several collections of the Snakes of the Cape Colony lately received from our excellent correspondent is a single small example, about a foot long, of this species, as kindly determined for us by Dr. Gtinther. It is the Coronella multimaculata of Smith (Illust. Zool. of South Africa, pi. 61), but properly referable to the genus Rhagerrhis of Peters (Monatsb. k. Preuss. Ak. Wissen. Berlin, 1862, p. 274). 2. Eight Tree-Snakes, born alive in the Society's Reptile House, on the 9th of January. The mother, a fine example of Dryophis prasina, presented by Dr. F. H. Bauer, C.M.Z.S., of Buitenzorg, Java, was received on the 15th of August last, so that she must have been for upwards of five months without any possibility of intercourse with a male of the same species. The young ones were all born on the same day at irregular intervals between 11 A.M. and 4.30 P.M. They were removed to another case, where they quickly |
