Zoological Society. 413 



malia, Birds and Reptiles contained in the Frankfort Museum ; and 

 the list of Birds forms the basis of a Catalogue of the Collection of 

 Birds in the Philadelphia Museum. 



The list of Cetoniadae was followed by the commencement of a 

 Catalogue of Lamellicornes in the Museum of the Garden of Plants 

 in Paris, and has been revised and extended, and printed in Stettin 

 by Dr. Sehaum ; and more lately the professors of that Institution 

 have published Catalogues of the Mammalia and Reptiles similar to 

 the second and more enlarged edition of the British Museum Cata- 

 logues of these animals ; and here we have a list of shells published 

 in Germany like the other work above quoted, most of them avowedly 

 following the lead set them by the Trustees of the British Museum. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



November 26, 1850.— R. H. Solly, Esq., F.R.S., in the Chair. 



Synopsis of the species of Deer (Ceryina), with the 

 Description of a new species in the Gardens of the 

 Society. By J. E. Gray, Esq., F.R.S. etc. 



The Deer, spread over all parts of the Globe, are easily recognized 

 by their deciduous horns, which are covered, when they are first de- 

 veloped, with a hairy skin. 



It has been supposed that the Deer were not to be found in Africa, 

 but the discovery of a species in Barbary has dispelled that idea ; they 

 are rare in that extensive quarter of the world, their place being sup- 

 plied by Antelopes. 



Since the publication of Cuvier's Essay on Deer, in which he de- 

 scribed several species from the study of the horns alone, many zoolo- 

 gists have almost entirely depended on the horns for the character of 

 the species, and Colonel Hamilton Smith has been induced to sepa- 

 rate some species on the study of a single horn. But the facilities 

 which menageries have afforded of studying these animals, and watch- 

 ing the variations which the horns of the species present, have shown 

 that several most distinct but allied species, as the Stag of Canada 

 and India, have horns so similar that it is impossible to distinguish 

 them by their horns. On the other hand, it has been shown that 

 animals of the same herd, or even from the same parents, and some- 

 times even the same specimen, under different circumstances, in suc- 

 ceeding years have produced horns so unlike one another in size and 

 form, that they might have been considered, if their history was not 

 known, as horns of very different species. These observations, and 

 the examination of the different cargoes of foreign horn which are 

 imported for the uses of the cutler, each cargo of which is generally 

 collected in a single locality, and therefore most probably belong to a 

 single specie-; peculiar to the district, — have proved to me that the 

 horns afford a much better character to separate the species into 

 groups, than to distinguish the allied species from one another. 



Colonel Hamilton Smith, in his Monograph of the Genus, sepa- 

 rated them into subgenera according to the form of the horns. 



