OCCASIONAL NOTES. 359 
but was thrown ashore by the next tide, and even then retained a part of 
the Salmon between his jaws. Both Halicherus gryphus and Phoca 
vitulina frequent the bay and estuary in limited numbers, appearing more 
frequently during summer and autumn, when following the run of the 
Salmon, than at other seasons of the year. When the banks are exposed 
at low water, Seals may be seen resting on them at the edge of the 
channels in various parts of the estuary; but their favourite resting-place 
is a sand-bank in the estuary between Killala Bay and Moyne Abbey, when 
a small herd may be seen on most fine days basking in the sun. Some 
few years ago, when Seals were much more numerous than at present, 
I remember seeing a herd numbering twenty-five individuals of both species 
lying on that sand-bank, but quite safe from molestation, for there was no 
cover of any kind to conceal a shooter, the banks being very flat. Seals 
have remarkably quick sight and a most acute sense of smell, so much so 
that it is useless to attempt stalking them from leeward; and before 
I became aware of this fact many a long, wet, tiresome crawl I have had, 
reaching the edge of the banks only to find the deep impressions of their 
huge bodies on the soft sand. The size of the Seals takeu about here varies 
from the small sucking calf up to the adult of 350 tbs., which is the heaviest 
I have met with, except the huge beast now recorded. But these weights 
are small compared with the weights of some Seals killed on the English 
coast; for Thompson, in his ‘Natural History of Ireland,’ speaks of 
one captured at the Farne Islands in December, 1851, and sent to the 
Ipswich Museum, weighing 779 tbs., and also of another Great Grey Seal, 
weighing 742 Ibs., sent to the British Museum.—Ropert Warren (Moy- 
view, Ballina). 
THe AccLIMATISATION OF WATERFOwWL.—The sixth “ Davis Lecture” 
was given in the Zoological Society’s Gardens, on the 8th July last, by the 
Secretary of the Society, Mr. Sclater, who selected for his subject ‘* Water- 
fowl,” that is, as he explained the term, the order Anseres, family Anatide, 
of naturalists. After a preliminary account of the structure of the common 
duck, taken as a type of the whole group, and of the nine different sub- 
families into which the Duck family had been divided by naturalists, the 
lecturer remarked upon the principal species of Waterfowl that had been 
“ acclimatized” in zoological gardens and ornamental waters, a purpose to 
which the present group of birds seemed to be specially suited. Of 174 
species of Geese, Swans, and Ducks of various kinds which are now known 
to science, 94 had been introduced in a semi-domestic condition into 
zoological gardens, and of these 50 had been bred and reproduced young in 
captivity. Within the past twenty years the Zoological Society had been 
able to exhibit in its Gardens examples of 86 species of these birds, and at 
the present moment its collection contained not less than 270 individuals, 
