476 Letters, Extracts, Notices, i^c. 



nest, and only when he could just see into it did the mother 

 quickly and silently glide off. Two eggs, not quite alike, 

 lay in it. Thinking more eggs would be laid, and wishing 

 his companion, Herr Reiser, to see the nest, he left the spot. 

 On returning next day, Herr Pfanni saAV the bird quit her 

 post in exactly the same fashion as on the previous occasion. 

 The eggs had not increased in number, and it was evident 

 that the bird was sitting hard. 



Herr Reiser, who accompanied Herr Pfanni when the eggs 

 were finally taken, adds to the paper some notes on the 

 structure of the nest and eggs. The nest was placed about 

 15 feet from the ground, upon the branches of a pine some 

 21 feet high, on the side of the tree facing the valley ; it was 

 composed of twigs of the larch, bird-cherry, and other trees, 

 and lined with dried grasses and straws and a few roots, but 

 with very little moss, and was smaller in size than is usual 

 with this bird. The eggs were very like those of the Jack- 

 daw ; even when examined with a magnifier they showed 

 but little difterence. Taken on March 23rd, they appeared 

 to have been incubated about five or six days; they dif- 

 fered slightly from one another in size, shape, and mark- 

 ings, of which exact particulars are recorded by Herr Reiser. 



A new Fossil Bird from the Wealden. — In the May number 

 of the 'Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society' (p. 206), 

 Prof. H. Gr. Seeley founds a new type of bird, Ornithodesmus 

 cluniculus, on some remains from the Wealden in the British 

 Museum, The differences which the fossil shows from 

 existing birds are three : first, the small number of vertebrae 

 in the sacrum ; secondly, the absence of the sacral recesses 

 from the middle lobes of the kidneys ; and, thirdly, the form 

 of the articular face of the first sacral vertebra. Fossil birds 

 lessen the importance of these differences : first the Archce- 

 opteryx has as few vertebi se in the sacrum, while Ichthyornis 

 dispar has no renal recesses in the middle of the sacrum ; 

 and the Gannet makes a sufficiently near approximation to 

 the form of the articulation to remove any improbability as 

 to its being a modified avian form. Prof. Seeley submits. 



