9124 Birds. 
employed there to use their best endeavours to obtain for me the bones of the penguin. 
They appear to have done their work very effectually; for I hear that they “ brought 
away many puncheons of bones and other remains”—of course not all necessarily 
* penguins”— which I believe are now on their way to New England, where they will 
doubtless be readily bought up by the farmers, though I trust some may be rescued 
from ignoble uses by the American naturalists. This mummy, however, the Bishop 
tells-me, was “ found four feet below the surface, and under two feet of ice.” I need 
scarcely point out to the Society what an advantage it is to have obtained so many 
bones undeniably belonging to ove individual bird. Though the skeleton is not perfect, 
it is plain that we have here at least one side of the entire vertebral column. The 
extremities of the limbs are altogether wanting on either side; and though this is 
greatly to be regretted, it is some consolation to think that a knowledge of what these 
parts are like in Alca impennis may be, with a little trouble, supplied from almost 
every one of the sixty-three or sixty-four stuffed skins at present known to exist.* 
I do not, however, mean to prolong these remarks by making any observations on the 
ostevlogical structure of this bird. That I have reason to hope may be fully described 
by a far more able pen; for it is my intention to place the specimen I now exhibit in 
the hands of Professor Owen, trusting that he will make it the subject of one of those 
monographs which have so materially enriched our series of ‘Transactions. I have 
but to say in conclusion that, so far as I know, my “mummy” is, with one exception, 
the only approach to a complete skeleton existing in Europe. That exception is the 
specimen, nearly perfect, in the Osteological Gallery of the Museum of the Jardin des 
Plantes at Paris; for the remains of the two gare-fowls killed on Eldey in 1844, which 
were sent to Copenhagen, and are still preserved in the Physiological Museum of the 
University there, have been dissected with a view to show the different systems of 
organs; they are therefore even less available to determine the general osteology of 
the bird than are the various loose bones which, through Stuvitz’s labours, exist in the 
Museums at Christiana and Copenhagen, that of our Royal College of Surgeons, and 
in wy own collection—Alfred Newton.t 
Ornithological Notes from Shetland. By Henry L. Saxspy, M.D 
(Continued from p. 9096.) 
Raven.—Ravens having hatched have now become very bold and 
mischievous. I procured fresh eggs from Burrafirth on the 16th of 
* Mr. Blyth, just six and twenty years ago, exhibited to this Society some bones 
which had been left in a preserved skin of this bird (P. Z. S. 1837, p. 122; and 
‘Ibis, 1861, p. 396, note). Within the last year, Mr. John Hancock extracted from 
his own beautiful specimen, and from the very ancient and interesting example in the 
Newcastle Museum, every bone they contained, without doing the slightest damage to 
the skins, as might be seen at the late Meeting of the British Association (Cat. of 
Exhibition, Nos. 180, 185). 
+ From the ‘ Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London,’ November 10, 1863: 
communicated by the author. 
