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Show 562 PROF. NEWTON ON BULWERIA COLUMBINA. [Nov. 15, posed by the B. A. Committee would result in the exclusion of St. Kilda. W e recognize the value of the criticism that it is often difficult or inconvenient for a dredger to know whether he is more or less than three miles from shore, and we see clearly that to the north and west of our shores the 100-fathom limit has advantages over the three-miles limit; if it be taken cum grano salis, that is so as to include St. Kilda, it will doubtless be found preferable to the political boundary in the Irish and Scotch Seas. If it be retorted on us that in taking a different limit for different parts of the area we reflect on the principles which we ourselves propose to use, we answer, not that we are affected by the present rage for inconsistency, but that, recognizing and insisting on the artificial nature of the area, howsoever defined, we would try so to bound it as to give the greatest satisfaction to the largest number of collectors. Prof. Newton, V.P. (on behalf of Mr. William Eagle Clarke), exhibited a stuffed specimen of Bulwer's Petrel (Bulweria columbina), remarking :- " Some doubt having, it seems, been expressed as to the occurrence of Bulwer's Petrel in this country, which was announced by Gould in the concluding part of his ' Birds of Europe,' published on the 1st of August, 1837, Mr. William Eagle Clarke, Curator of the Museum of the Philosophical and Literary Society at Leeds, determined to investigate the facts ; and as his search for the specimen in question has been successful, I have great pleasure in exhibiting it to you, on his behalf, to-night. I have the greater pleasure in doing this as, but for his perseverance and that of a local naturalist, Mr. James Carter, of Burton House, Masham, the specimen would probably have been for ever lost sight of, whereas we may now hope that it will find a permanently safe abode. Gould's statement was that the specimen having been found dead on the banks of the Ure, near Tanfield in Yorkshire, on the 8th of May, 1837, was brought to Captain Dalton, of Slenningford near Ripon, a gentleman, as I learn, who had succeeded to a collection of stuffed birds begun by his father. The father was Colonel Dalton, who, curiously enough, had sent Bewick the specimen of the Common Stormy Petrel (also found dead in that neighbourhood) from which the figure and description in his well-known work was taken (British Birds, ed. 1, ii. pp. 249-251). At the end of last May, Mr. W . E. Clarke applied to Mr. Carter, and the first result of the latter's inquiry was to find that the Dalton collection had been dispersed by sale just a week before. Fortunately all the cases of stuffed birds had been bought by persons living in Ripon ; and, having obtained their names from the auctioneer, Mr. Carter, after many failures and some loss of time, discovered in the possession of Mr. Jacobs, the Head-master of the Choir-School in that city, the case and the specimen before you, labelled ' Procellaria bulwerii,' which he had bought with others at the Dalton sale. Beyond this fact, however, there was no note or anything to identify the specimen with the object of the search. Mr. Carter thereupon |