THE ZooLocist—OcToBER, 1876. 5118 
chosen for its state of plumage and condition of preservation. In 
the grounds are a number of aviaries, arranged much after the style 
of those in the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park, in which are 
many species of the genus Phasianus; but best of all is the duck- 
pond, upon which we counted no less than twenty-eight species of 
swans, geese and ducks, amongst them being the very rare Peruvian 
swan, with its black head and neck in such striking contrast to its 
white body. 
We left Chertsey Bridge, at the end of a day spent after our own 
hearts, wishing there were more such men as Mr. Forbes, who 
spares neither time nor money where he can further the ends of 
pisciculture. 
Joun T. CaRRINGTON. 
Crystal Palace Aquarium, 
September 19, 1876. 
Dr. Buller on the Fauna and Flora of New Zealand.—At the last 
General Meeting of the Wellington (N. Z.) Philosophical Society, the new 
President (Dr. Buller), on taking the chair, delivered a short address, in 
which he compared the present state of knowledge regarding the fauna and 
flora of New Zealand with what it was at the date of the formation of this 
Society. He said :—* At the time to which I refer, the scientific literature 
of the colony consisted of Dr. Hooker's ‘ New-Zealand Flora,’ Dr. Mantell’s 
chapters on New Zealand in his ‘Fossils of the British Museum,’ the 
‘ Zoology of the Voyage of the Erebus and Terror,’ Dr. Dieffenbach’s two 
volumes of ‘ Travels’ (which contained much information on Geology and 
some valuable Natural-History appendices), Professor Owen’s early memoirs 
on Dinornis and its allies in the ‘ Transactions’ of the Zoological Society of 
London, besides a few minor works and scattered papers in the ‘ Proceedings’ 
of various learned bodies. With the exception of the Botany, which had 
been explored at a very early date by Banks, Solander, Sparmann, and the 
two Forsters, and had afterwards been exhaustively treated by the accom- 
plished Director of Kew, no department of New-Zealand Biology had been, 
in any sense, properly worked. The lists of the fauna appended to Dieffen- 
bach’s ‘ Travels,’ although useful to students in the colony as a basis to 
work upon, were enumerations of such species only as were known to 
science, and were confessedly imperfect. In every section of Zoology the 
number of recorded species has been considerably increased. For example, 
the whales and dolphins positively mentioned by that author as inhabiting 
the New-Zealand seas were only 4; the number has since been increased to 
21, and new species are being continually added. Of the 84 species of birds 
enumerated, no less than 17 were of doubtful authority ; the number of well- 
