196 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



Mr Alexander Dennistoun, jun., exhibited a Peregrine Falcon 

 {Falco peregrinus) in the first year's plumage, which had been 

 artistically grouped in the act of feeding on a Ptarmigan. This 

 specimen was intended for the Kelvingrove Museum. 



Mr Eobert Gray exhibited specimens of the Buff-breasted 

 Sandpiper (Trincja nifescens), and Pectoral Sandpiper (T. 

 pedoralis), and read an interesting communication on the habits 

 and migrations of these two birds, which had been forwarded 

 by Mr Thomas M'llwraith, a well-known ornithologist resident 

 in Hamilton, Ontario. Mr M'llwraith referred to the difficulty 

 of defining the geographical range of certain wading birds, 

 some of this species appearing but for an hour or two on 

 their northward journey. He had observed the Buff-breasted 

 Sandpiper only on the land-locked shores of Burlington Bay, a 

 portion of Lake Ontario which is crossed by a sand bar, leaving 

 an area of six miles, broadly edged in many places with flags and 

 bullrushes, and likewise an expanse of mud which is attractive to 

 wading birds. Here also he had met with the Pectoral Sandpiper 

 in considerable numbers, though, in the time of Audubon, it was 

 believed to be wholly confined to the sea coast. Mr M'llwraith 

 concluded his communication with some remarks on the habits of 

 the Solitary Sandpiper [Totanus cJiloropygius), and the Spotted 

 Sandpiper (7". macularius), both of which are found on the margin 

 of the same bay. 



Mr John Young, F.Gr.S., exhibited a number of fossil plant 

 remains, in which the woody structure is finely preserved in a 

 calcified condition. These had been obtained by Professor 

 Alexander Dickson and himself, from the Lower Carbonifer- 

 ous deposits that lie among the traps of the Kilpatrick hills, at 

 Glenbarbuck, near Bowling. They belong chiefly to Stigmaria — a 

 genus of plants forming the underground stems of Sigillaria and 

 Lejndodendron, and which with other lycopods flourished during 

 the Carboniferous period, their remains form one or two beds 

 of impure coal, which alternate with the strata containing the 

 stigmarian stems at Bowling. Mr Young referred to the, evidence 

 which these coal-beds and plant remains afford of former forests 

 of vegetation that had grown upon these tracts during the long 

 periods of repose that had taken place between the various outflows 

 of trap and other igneous rock matter of which this section of the 

 Kilpatrick hills is principally built up. The stigmarian stems 



