428 Bulletin of the British 



XXXVII. — Bulletin of the British Ornitholoyists' Club. 



Nos. LII.-LIV. 



No. LII. (March 28tli, 1898). 



The fifty-first Meeting of the Club was held at the Restau- 

 rant Frascatij 32 Oxford Street, on Wednesday, the 16th of 

 March, 1898. Chairman : P. L. Sclater, F.R.S. Twenty- 

 six Members and two guests were present. 



Mr. W. E. De Winton exhibited a specimen of Perdix 

 daurica, purchased in Leadenhall Market. Several hundred 

 specimens of this Partridge were on sale in the market, but 

 their exact origin could not be ascertained. The birds were 

 in excellent condition and had evidently not been shot. 

 That they had come from some Mahommedan district of 

 Asia was equally obvious, as every specimen examined at 

 the British Museum was found to have its throat cut. 



Mr. Howard Saunders exhibited the specimen of the 

 small Shearwater obtained ofi" the island of Valentia, 

 Kerry, on the 11th of May, 1853. For years this had 

 been identified as the Dusky Shearwater, Puffinus obscurus 

 (Gm.), but recent investigations by Mr. Ogilvie Grant in the 

 islands near Madeira, as well as by Mr. Boyd Alexander in 

 the Cape Verde Archipelago, had aroused a suspicion that 

 there might be an error in the identification of the Irish 

 bird. The authorities of the Science and Art Museum of 

 Dublin having kindly forwarded the example in question 

 for comparison with the specimens of P. obscurus in the 

 British Museum, it had been clearly established that this 

 was not P. obscurus, but the closely allied P. assimilis of 

 Gould, which might be distinguished from P. obscurus by its 

 smaller size, by the white or pale centres to the inner webs of 

 the primaries, the white under tail-coverts, and a more decided 

 white line on each side of the neck. The identification had 

 been confirmed by Mr. Osbert Salvin. P. assimilis bred in 

 the islands of the Madeira and of the Canary groups, as well 



