21 
leaving it to those who may have a better opportunity of examining 
the specimen than I had, while it was in London in the summer of 
1847, to decide this question; and I feel that it is even possible that 
it may prove to be the type of a new form altogether. I propose to 
characterize it provisionally as 
Coracopsis ? PERSONATA. 
Sp. Ch.—Smaragdina ; fronte, periophthalmis mandibularumque basi 
atris ; pectore abdomineque medio aurantiacis, hoc saturatiore ; 
remigibus rectricibusque cyaneo-nigris. 
The habitat of this fine bird is supposed to be New Guinea. It 
appears to be about fifteen inches in length. 
February 8, 1848. 
William Yarrell, Esq., Vice-President, in the Chair. 
Three communications were made to the Meeting :— 
1. DEscRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES OF Gaxipictis From Mapa- 
cascak. By Joun Epwarp Gray, Esea., F.R.S. etc. ETC. 
(Mamm. pl. 1.) 
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in the manuscript catalogue of the Mam- 
malia in the Paris collections, notices a specimen from Madagascar 
which had been collected by M. Sonnerat, which he described in the 
following manner, under the name of Mustela striata: ‘‘ Supra satu- 
raté fusca; striis quinque longitudinalibus angustis parallelis albis ; 
gastreo pallidé canescente, cauda basi fusca, reliqua alba; statura 
Mustele vulgaris.” —Fischer, Syn. 224. 
M. Cuvier in the ‘Régne Animal’ (ed. 2%. 144) described the same 
specimen under the name of “La Belette rayée de Madagascar, 
Putorius striatus, Cuvier, de la taille de la belette d'Europe, d'un 
brun roussatre avec cing lignes longitudinales blanchatres ; de dessous 
et presque toute la queue blanchatre.” 
M. Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in the notes to a paper on some 
Madagascar animals in M. Guerin’s Magasin de Zoologie for 1839, 
p. 32, informs us that the specimen above described then existed in 
the collection, and that he had convinced himself that it was a young 
specimen of an animal rather more than two feet long, which had 
been sent to the Museum in 1834 by M. Goudot, under the name of ~ 
Vonsire blanc, and called Vontsira foutche by the Medecasses ; and he 
gives a description and figures of the animal and its skull, t. 18, 19, 
forming for it a genus which he names Galidictis. 
A few months ago the Museum purchased of Mr. Tucker of the 
Quadrant an animal from Madagascar, which is evidently nearly allied 
to the Galidictis striata, but differs from it in some particulars, which 
