of Italy and Spain. 393 



Of course I examined the new and unique European bird 

 Syncecus lodoisice [cf. Ibis, 1862, p. 380), which in my profane 

 ignorance I considered a dark variety of Coturnix communis ; 

 but not wishing to lower myself further in the opinion of the 

 possessors of this rarity, or of its godfathers, Messrs. Jules Ver- 

 reaux and 0. des Murs, 1 will limit myself to saying that 

 new Australian species, or whatever it may be, was undoubt- 

 edly captured alive in Lombardy, and showed no signs of having 

 escaped from confinement. 



In the Palazzo Correr there is a fair local collection, and a far 

 better one at Bologna. At Florence the natural-history de- 

 partment is at present hardly worthy of the new capital of 

 Italy, the finest collections being at Turin, which I was unable 

 to visit owing to severe cold and heavy falls of snow. At Pisa, 

 under the able direction of Dr. Savi, the father of Italian orni- 

 thology, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making, the 

 Museum would be an honour to any country ; and no frequenter 

 of our British Museum could help blushing if he compared the 

 hideously distorted objects which our authorities are pleased to 

 term " type specimens " with these life-like groups from the 

 hand of an Italian at once naturalist and artist. The celebrated 

 groups by Mr. John Hancock, of Newcastle, are the only ones 

 with which I can compare those of Pisa. Especially worthy of 

 notice is a group of Hose Pastors on a fruit-tree, and a flock 

 of Starlings on the decomposed head of a goat. Perhaps the 

 most taking of all is a vixen fox and litter; and, for spirit, a 

 wolf fighting with two sheep-dogs is unrivalled. 



But to return to Florence. The Museum possesses a mounted 

 Alca impennis, for which, or for another recently purchased for 

 the King, some exorbitant price was paid *. In the Zoological 

 Gardens in the Cascine is an immense live Raven, labelled 



[* We have some reason for believing that the specimen in the Mu- 

 seum at Florence is one of those that passed through the hands of the 

 late apothecary Mecklenburg, of Flensborg, from whom it was bought 

 by Heer Frank, of Amsterdam, and by him sold to Dr. Michahelles in Nu- 

 remberg, whence it was transferred to its present abode. The specimen 

 now in the King of Italy's collection at Veneria Reale was formerly 

 Pastor Brehm's, who obtained it in 1832 from the Museum of Copen- 

 hagen. — Ed.] 



N. S. VOL. V. 2 E 



