041 Zoological Society :— 
this Society know the result, I think they will congratulate me on 
my good fortune in having excited his lordship’s interest. After 
several other friendly letters, I had three days ago the great plea- 
sure of receiving one in which the Bishop informed me his success 
had surpassed anything I could have anticipated ; for his lordship 
had done no less than secure me what may be not inaptly called 
the “mummy” of an Alea impennis, which, having come into 
my hands yesterday, I have now the honour of exhibiting to the 
Society. 
It appears that the Colonial Government have recently conceded 
to a Mr. Glindon the privilege of removing the soil from Funk 
Island ; for this soil, beg highly charged with organic matter, is 
consequently valuable as manure when imported to Boston and other 
places in North America. The Bishop, through Mr. N. R. Vail (a 
gentleman of the United States, well informed on scientific subjects, 
and therefore aware of the interesting nature of the research), made 
application to the lessee of Funk Island, who ordered his men em- 
ployed there to use their best endeavours to obtain for me bones of 
the Penguin. They appear to have done their work very effectually ; 
for I hear that they “ brought away many puncheons of bones and 
other remains’’—of course not all necessarily ‘‘ Penguins ’’—which 
I believe are now on their way to New England, where they will 
doubtless be readily bought up by the farmers, though I trust some 
may be rescued from ignoble uses by the American naturalists. 
This mummy, however, the Bishop tells me, was ‘*‘ found four feet 
below the surface, and under two feet of ice.”’ I need scarcely point 
out to the Society what an advantage it is to have obtained so many 
bones undeniably belonging to one individual bird. Though the 
skeleton is not perfect, it is plain that we have here at least one side 
of the entire vertebral column. ‘The extremities of the limbs are 
altogether wanting on either side; and though this is greatly to be 
regretted, it is‘some consolation to think that a knowledge of what 
these parts are like in Alea impennis may be, with a little trouble, 
supplied from almost every one of the sixty-three or sixty-four 
stuffed skins at present known to exist*. I do not, however, mean 
to prolong these remarks by making any observations on the osteo- 
logical structure of this bird. That I have reason to hope may be 
fully described by a far more able pen ; for it is my intention to place 
the specimen I now exhibit in the hands of Professor Owen, trusting 
that he will make it the subject of one of those monographs which 
have so materially enriched our series of ‘Transactions.’ I have 
but to say in conclusion that, so far as I know, my ‘‘mummy” is, 
with one exception, the only approach to a complete skeleton existing 
in Europe. That exception is the specimen, nearly perfect, in the 
* Mr. Blyth, just six and twenty years ago, exhibited to this Society some 
bones which had been left in a preserved skin of this bird (P. Z. 8. 1837, p. 122; 
and Ibis, 1861, p. 396, note). Within the last year, Mr. John Hancock extracted 
from his own beautiful specimen, and from the very ancient and interesting ex- 
ample in the Newcastle Museum, every bone they contained, without doing the 
slightest damage to the skins, as might be seen at the late Meeting of the British’ 
Association (Cat. of Exhibition, nos. 180 & 185). 
ae 
