Dr. J. E. Gray on Ateles Bartletti. 163 



one who was formerly a Vice-President of the Society and is 

 in the constant habit of referring to the ' Proceedings,' I am 

 not able to explain." 



XiX. — On Ateles Bartletti. 

 By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.K.S. &c. 



In the minutes of the meeting of the Zoological Society, 17th 

 January 1871, just published, it is stated that, on concluding 

 his Report, " the Secretary called attention to the registers of 

 accessions to and deaths in the Society's menagerie which 

 lay on the table, and showed, in contradiction to statements 

 recently published by Dr. Gray, that they were faithfully kept 

 up, and that a revised abstract of the former was published 

 every year as an appendix to the Society's ' Proceedings.' " 



I did not deny the existence of the register, and I am very 

 glad to hear that it is better kept than when I was able to 

 attend the Society, when it did not furnish the information 

 that I required; and the abstract being published in the 

 ' Proceedings ' is comparatively a recent custom. From the 

 inquiries made of me, it is certain that the register must often 

 have been many months in arrear ; and if this register con- 

 tained the habitats, the difficulty that I have experienced in 

 obtaining them is the more incomprehensible. 



Since my observations an alteration, which is a great im- 

 provement, has certainly been made. The dead animals are 

 now marked with a ticket referring to the register giving the 

 origin, habitat, &c. But this is not extended to all the 

 specimens ; for I received some young Crocodilians and a 

 Lizard without any such ticket, and rejected them, as the 

 habitat is most essential when determining the Crocodilians 

 in their young state. 



When Dr. Sclater made the extraordinary general state- 

 ment* that the habitats of the specimens in the British 

 Museum were not to be depended upon, of course he referred 

 to the numerous specimens which we annually purchase from 

 the Zoological Society ; of the others he could have but a very 

 limited knowledge ; and the greater part are received from the 



* It was to be expected that Mr. Sclater would before long himself 

 refute the sweeping assertion that no argument whatever, as regards 

 geographical distribution, could be based on the specimens in the British 

 Museum. Only a week or two ago there appeared in ' Nature ' a popular 

 article of his on the Fauna of New Zealand. May we ask him whence 

 he could have obtained more complete information regarding the reptiles 

 of that country than from the Catalogue of the British Museum ? 



