NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 6.") 



ear. No bird has so often been changed in its zoological position, 

 having been placed among the gallinaceous, and also among the 

 wading birds, and although bearing the name of vulture, it is more 

 allied to the true falcons. Sharpe, in his Catalogue of the British 

 Museum birds, places it in that aberrant group of falcons which 

 approach the Turkey buzzards in their habits. It is a useful and 

 valued bird for the services it renders in destroying snakes and 

 other noxious reptiles, and attempts have been made to introduce 

 it into other parts of the globe for this purpose. It is easily tamed, 

 and almost any kind of food seems to agree with it, but its intro- 

 duction to the poultry yard where young chickens are kept, is not 

 desirable. Its gait is a smart run; on seeing a snake on the 

 ground, it runs up to it with outstretched wings, and quickly stuns 

 it with a blow from its pinions. It has also been seen to bear them 

 to a height, and letting them fall, kill them outright. 



(3) An egg of the Box Tortoise, Testudo Carolina, Lin., obtained 

 from the ovary of a dead specimen. 



Mr. Peter Cameron exhibited two cases of British and Foreign 

 Hymenoptera, and of preparations for the microscope, mounted in 

 the manner he had described at a former meeting. 



Mr. John Young, F.G.S., exhibited and described some specimens 

 of rocks and minerals from Aberdeenshire, forwarded by Mr. John 

 A. Harvie-Brown, F.R.S.E., Y.P., including Asbestos, a variety 

 of Asbestos known as Mountain Leather, Graphite and Serpentine. 

 The Chairman exhibited a thin section of Flexible Sandstone 

 from India, which vibrated when held in the hand and slightly 

 shaken. Mr. Young explained that this elasticity was due to the 

 presence of Talc, mixed with the coarse grains of which the stone 

 is composed, and which allowed it to vibrate to a certain extent 

 without fracture. The Chairman also showed a flint nodule from 

 Aberdeenshire which bore the impression of a species of Inoceramus, 

 a typical genus of chalk fossils. These nodules are found in great 

 abundance at Buchan Ness, and are thought to have been derived 

 from a cretaceous deposit which at one time existed in the district, 

 but which has been entirely removed by denudation. 



vol. v. 



