189 



November 27, 1832. 

 Richard Owen, Esq., in the Chair. 



A letter was read, addressed to the Secretary of the Society by 

 W. Smith, Esq., Secretary of the Hudson's Bay Company. It re- 

 ferred to an Arctic Fox, Canis lagopus, Linn., recently presented 

 by the Hudson's Bay Company to the Society. This individual, 

 which is now living in the Society's menagerie, was caught, as Capt. 

 Hanwell of the Company's ship Prince of Wales informed him, " on 

 the ice, on the 18th of August, in lat. .'56° 54' N., long. 83° 30' W., 

 about one hundred miles from the land : the Indians who visited 

 Moose Factory called it Mistatarganish, and said that it was a cross 

 between a Fox and some other animal, probably a Wolf.'''' 



At the same time with the Arctic Fox, the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany presented to the Society a living Pekan or Fisher Martin, 

 Mustela Canadensis, Schreb. 



A specimen was exhibited of the Falco rufipes, Bechst., a bird of 

 exceedingly rare occurrence in Britain. It was shot near Doncaster, 

 and is preserved in the collection of W. H. Rudstone Read, Esq., 

 by whom it was communicated for exhibition to the Committee. 



At the request of the Chairman, Mr. Gould exhibited a very ex- 

 tensive collection o^ Bird skins, from the Orkneys, and pointed out 

 particularly those which he regarded as most interesting, either on 

 account of their rarity or the state of their plumage. They included 

 beautiful specimens of the Ivory Gull, Larus eburneiis, Temm., and 

 of the King Duck, Somateria spectuhilis, Steph., as well as of other 

 rare species. In many of them, as in the black Guillemot, Uria 

 Troile, and red-h7-easted Merganser, Mergus Serrator, the series was 

 complete, commencing from the egg, and proceeding to the adult 

 plumage of the birds, which were generally exhibited both in their 

 summer and winter dress. Nearly the whole of them were accom- 

 panied by specimens of their eggs. 



The collection contained individuals of all the species o? para- 

 sitic Gull hitherto discovered on our coasts, and Mr. Gould re- 

 marked on the differences existing between them, which he illus- 

 trated by reference to the specimens on the table. The species are 

 Lestris Cataractes, Lest. Pomarhinus, Lest. Richardsonii, Swains., 

 and Lest, parasiticus ; the latter being now for the first time added 

 to the British Fauna, the bird previously described by English 

 writers under that name being identical with the species described 

 by Mr. Swainson in the ' Fauna Boreali- Americana' as the Lestris 

 Richardsonii. 

 [No. XXV.] ZooL.Soc. Proceedings of the Comm. of Science. 



