138 Zoological Society : — 



lected by Professor Lilljeborg on the coast of Norway, and about 

 the same number at Stockholm, taken by Professor Loven on 

 the same coast. In both cases those shells were separated, as 

 distinct from described species, but not named. Reference 

 being made to Mr. Jeffreys, he recognized them, and mentioned 

 my intention of describing the species and naming it after him. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Nov. 10, 1863.— E.W. H. Holdsworth, Esq., F.Z.S., in the Chair. 



Remarks on the Exhibition of a Natural Mummy of 

 Alga impennis. By Alfred Newton, M.A., F.L.S., F.Z.S. 



For the last twenty-one years, since the appearance of the part of 

 Mr. Yarrell's 'History of British Birds' containing his account of 

 Alca impennis, wherein was cited M. Audubon's statement that that 

 species bred on an island in the neighbourhood of Newfoundland, 

 the attention of ornithologists in this country has been more or less 

 directed to that colony, in the hope of obtaining thence specimens 

 of this rare and curious bird. Mr. John "WoUey, with his usual 

 sagacity, applying the knowledge he had culled from his extensive 

 researches among the works of our older naturalists, not only soon 

 made out the truth of Willughby's supposition, " Penguin nautis 

 nostratibus dicta, quce Goifugel Hoieri esse videtur" (Ornithologia, 

 Lond. 1676, p. 242), but found that the name was still persistent 

 among those who were yet engaged in the Cod-fishery in the New- 

 foundland seas. Among his various memoranda I find one, appa- 

 rently written about the year 1850, to this effect : — 



" In Newfoundland, Funk or Penguin Isle is 1 70 miles north of 

 St. John's, and about thirty-six miles north-east by east from Cape 

 Freels, the north headland of Bonavista Bay. There are also Pen- 

 guin Isles two or three miles from shore ; Penguin Islands, too, in 

 the middle of the south coast of Newfoundland." 



This note was evidently written after making a careful examination 

 of the map ; and I well remember, in February 1856, going over a 

 chart of the North Atlantic with him, in which he had previously 

 marked the various places known as " Penguin Island," " Bird Rock," 

 and the like. To the best of my recollection, he also told me, either 

 at the same or some former period, that in the course of his reading 

 he had come across various notices of " Penguins," contained in the 

 narratives of ancient voyages to that part of the world. All this 

 time, however, I had not been altogether idle in the way of collecting 

 (or at least seeking for) information on the subject. In the summer 

 of 1853, as I have elsewhere stated*, a boatman at Torquay, th§n 

 about seventy years of age, and by name WilUam Stabb, told my 



* ' Zoology of Ancient Europe,' London and Cambridge, 1862, p. 30. 



