Royal Microscopical Society. 151 



For several days prior to death the bird had diarrhoea, but no 

 other symptom of illness was noticed. In my examination of the 

 body, the most notable feature was the presence of a layer or thin 

 film of a pale greenish, mouldy, fungus-looking substance upon the 

 pleural surface of the lungs. The underlying pleura was some- 

 what thickened and of a delicate roseate tint, apparently from 

 injection of the minute capillary vessels. The lungs themselves 

 exhibited spots of lobular pneumonia, that is, were irregularly 

 hepatized. The intestines were nearly empty, the contents alone 

 being bad-smelling fluid matter. 



The cryptogamic growth as exposed on the pleural surface was 

 little over • 25 inch in diameter, and irregularly outlined. To the 

 eye it looked hke a mouldy patch, of a white colour with a greenish 

 tinge. A hand lens showed a diminutive forest of suberect fila- 

 mentous structures. A portion of the mould placed under the 

 compound microscope, with a low power revealed constituents as 

 subjoined. An abundance of linear filaments crossing and so inter- 

 woven with each other as to form a kind of open reticular meshwork. 

 Some of these filaments were simple threads, but the greatest 

 number had a denticulate character. Distributed amongst the 

 capillary meshes were innumerable echinate circular cells apparently 

 nucleated. These cells or spores here and there had attachments 

 to the filaments, and in some cases at the margin of the field I 

 observed a crucial or stellate figure produced by a spore being situate 

 at the junction of two obliquely-placed threads. With a still higher 

 magnifying power I could distinguish a set of oval or elliptical 

 cells distinctly nucleated. 



2. In the case of a European Eough-legged Buzzard, Archi- 

 huteo lagoims, Gmehn, whose pathological condition presented no 

 other feature of importance, I likemse detected a fungous-like 

 vegetable growth spread over the pleural membrane of the left 

 lung. This bu^d, also an adult male, had been only about a month 

 in the Gardens, and died on the 31st August, 1868, no symptom of 

 disease meanwhile having been noticed. 



In this case a greater area of the lung was covered by the 

 mould, but which in colour and general appearance was a counter- 

 part of that of the cockatoo. 



3. The thii'd example was that of a female Kittiwake Gull, 

 Hissa tridactyla, Linn., which was received by the Zoological Society 

 31st December, 1868, and died on the 7th March, 1869. For a 

 short time it was noticed to pine, and take its food badly. The 

 body on death was in a poor condition, although its plumage seemed 

 good. The viscera showed nothing specially worthy of note, except- 

 ing the right lung and its investing membrane. The latter had 

 attached to it a pale greenish film of vegetable mucor similar to the 

 two foregoing birds, and in this case, whether primarily or as a 



M 2 



