138 THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



time it was carefully fed and brought home in good condition. 

 This king penguin showed great disinclination to go into the 

 water, and it was proposed that "while waiting the arrival of 

 the next porpoise or whale" the bird should be turned into 

 the large basin."^ 



Other important introductions were the three-banded arma- 

 dillo, the Siamese pheasant, f and the red-crowned pigeon of 

 the Seychelles. 



Early in 1866 a Patagonian sea-lion was purchased of a 

 French sailor named Lecomte, who had brought the animal to 

 England in the previous year. He had captured it in the 

 Falkland Islands and trained it to perform various tricks, which 

 attracted a good deal of attention at Cremorne Gardens and 

 other places. At the time of purchase the former owner entered 

 the service of the Society, in which he remained till his death 

 in 1877. The sea-lion was a great attraction for more than 

 a year, when it died from inflammation of the intestines, pro- 

 bably caused by swallowing a fish-hook, which had escaped the 

 keeper's notice in some of the fish on which it was fed. 



The straw-necked ibis, the little whimbrel, and the wattled 

 lapwing, from Australia, and the trumpeter swan and the ruddy 

 flamingo, from North America, were received for the first time. 



Wolf's sketches were exhibited in the upper part of the 

 Museum, and attracted a good many visitors to the Gardens. 

 Some of these unrivalled drawings now adorn the walls of the 

 meeting-room ; the rest are bound in large folios in the Library. 



Clarence Bartlett went out to Surinam to take charge of 

 an American manatee, which had been purchased of a German 

 naturalist. Unfortunately, the animal died a few hours before 

 the vessel arrived at Southampton. Equally unsuccessful was 

 the attempt to send one home from Porto Rico. Both the 

 bodies, however, were fresh, and Dr. Murie's dissections formed 

 the subject of a memoir in the Transactions. 



In the winter of this year two accidents happened. The 

 more serious was the fire in the girafl'e house, which, though it 

 was soon got under, resulted in the death of an adult female and 



* A. R. W.\i.e. Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace] in the Reader, April 29, 1865. 

 t Now known as Diard's crested fire-back, the Lophura diardi of the British 

 Museum Catalogue (xxii. 290). 



