306 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1890. 



On the same day I saw a storm-driven specimen of Sulci cyanops, the Blue- 

 beaked Booby. It is not uncommon for these birds to be brought up here by 

 south-westerly gales and caught by hand. 



W F. Sinclair, Bo. C.S. 



Alibag, 16th June 1890. 



3. A TRAIT OF HEREDITY. 



In June last, at Chikalda, I took three young bulbuls of the common kind 

 two or three days after they were hatched out, and brought them up by hand. 

 They had consequently no acquaintance with their mother or her ways. Shortly 

 after these three birds were fully fledged, and able to hop and fly on to their 

 perch, two of the young of the white-throated crested bulbuls were brought to me, 

 and put by me into the same cage as the other three. I continued to hand-feed 

 all. Suddenly one day a female of the earlier lot, after her own appetite was satis- 

 fied, and before I had attended to the two junior ones, who were vigorously 

 attracting my attention, taking what I gave her, fed first one and then the other, 

 and from that day has gone on feeding them just as their natural mother would 

 have done, and as if she herself had years of experience and had brought up 

 numerous famdies. 



The trait seems to me sufficiently curious to note in the Journal. 



Personally I am not aware that a fact of the kind has been observed before, 

 though I dare say it has, for there is little, if anything, new under the sun. 



Kenneth Mackenzie, Colonel. 

 Amraoti, Berar, July 1890. 



4. EGG-LAYING ANIMALS. 



At the President's Soiree at the Royal College of Surgeons, held in London 

 on 27th June, by far the most interesting exhibit, so far as zoologists are concerned, 

 was that of Mr. "W. H. Caldwell, of Cambridge, who, it will be remembered, was 

 sent out by his University to Australia to study the life history of the Ornitho- 

 rhynchus and Echidna, and trace the development of the young through all stages 

 from the egg. 



The Ornithorhynchus builds a nest at the end of one of the subterranean 

 burrows which start from the water hole in which the animal feeds. The eggs are 

 two in number, and are sat upon until hatched, when the young, measuring barely 

 three-quarters of an inch in length, at once begin to lap the mdk supplied by the 

 mammary glands of the mother. 



Echidna lays, as a rule, only one egg, and carries it in a pouch formed by a 

 fold of skin surrounding the mammary glands. The young animal remains in the 

 pouch for many weeks. 



Mr Caldwell's series, showing seven stages of development, included (1) egg 

 pf Echidna, taken from the uterus, showing the meroblastic segmentation at the 



