THE IBIS. 



NEW SERIES. 



No. XVI. OCTOBER 1868. 



XXX. — On the former Existence of a large Pelican in the 

 English Fens. By Alphonse Milne-Edwards*. 



The Mammals whose remains we find in peat-bogs have been 

 tlie object of careful study ; and we begin to know well several 

 representatives of that fauna with which man, at his origin, pro- 

 bably had to do. On the other hand we know very little of the 

 Birds which have left their remains in these deposits, and hitherto 

 a precise determination of them has not been attempted. There 

 would be, however, a great interest in undertaking this exami- 

 nation, and in ascertaining what were the species of this class 

 which inhabited our countries at the period when the Beaver, the 

 Urus, the Bison, and the Irish Elk lived in great numbers in the 

 forests and on the borders of our watercourses. I have lately 

 convinced myself that investigations of this kind would give im- 

 portant results. 



The peat-bogs of the neighbourhood of Cambridge have fur- 

 nished a pretty large number of remains of Birds, which Mr. 

 Secley and Mr. Alfred Newton have been good enough to submit 



* [We have thought that a transhitiou of this article (which appears 

 in the ' Annales des Sciences NatiU'elles,' 5^^ st5r. torn. viii. pp. 285-293, 

 pi. 14) would be interesting to very many of our readere, who might other- 

 wise not become acquainted witli it. The specimen was exhibited at the 

 Meeting of the Zoolof>iral Society of London, on the Oth of January last 

 (cf P. Z. S. 18m, p. 2).— Ed.] 



N. S. — VOL. IV. 2 C 



