180 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



these trilobites, referred to the interest attached to many of the 

 species in Mrs Gray's collection, several of these being new to 

 science and others new to the Girvan beds, while the whole group 

 clearly established the age of the deposits and the relation which 

 the strata bore to the Silurian rocks of other parts of the world. 



The Librarian announced the following donations to the 

 library: — Transactions of the Malvern Naturalists' Field Club, 

 1870; Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of 

 Manchester, nos. 6 and 7 ; from the respective Societies. 



SPECIAL MEETING. 

 NATUKAL HISTORY CLASS EOOM, GLASGOW UNIVERSITY. 



February 13th, 1872. 

 Professor John Young, M.D., F.G.S., President, in the chair. 



SPECIMENS EXHIBITED. 



Mr James Thomson exhibited a valuable series of bones of the 

 Moa from New Zealand, and several flint knives and scrapers 

 which had been discovered in the mound from which the bones- 

 had been taken. These excited considerable interest, and the 

 Chairman remarked that the series formed a valuable addition to 

 the Kelvingrove Museum. 



Mr Gray drew the attention of the meeting to several British 

 birds that had recently been presented to the Hunterian collection 

 by Mr James Lumsden, and afterwards read a communication 

 from Mr John A. Harvie Brown of Dunipace, one of the Society's 

 corresponding members, relating to the extraordinary abundance 

 of gulls and Garvies during the present winter in the estuary of 

 the Forth. 



A conversation then ensued respecting the results of the Sea- 

 Birds Preservation Act, in the course of which Mr Gray maintained, 

 with some degree of probability, that the present swarms of gulls 

 found in tlie Forth were due, not to the increase of British breed- 

 ing stations, but to migratory flocks from other countries which 

 had followed the shoals of fishes as they travelled southwards. 

 Forty years ago flocks of gulls equally large had been observed 

 in the Forth, and their presence was then attributed to the same 

 cause. 



