168 LETTER FROM MR. R. SWINHOE. [Apr. 26, 
the Directors of the Royal Mail Steam Company to the commanders 
of their ships which may call here, to receive the same on board in 
a tank which I would have prepared for their conveyance to England. 
These animals eat grass, and there will be no great trouble in carry- 
ing them safely : the most would be in changing the water every day ; 
but on board a steamer, with pumps and hose, that would be next to 
nothing. I have at present two specimens of the Manatee (a male 
and a female), which I keep in a large tank with holes in the sides 
and bottom (open at top), soas to admit the flow of water. Thus I 
have no trouble in keeping them. They are curious creatures, and 
respectively 83 and 6} feet long by 34 and 3 feet broad, and 43 feet 
and 33 feet in diameter at the broadest part, weighing about 500 and 
350 Ibs. Those I now have I have offered to the Commissioners of 
the Central Park in New York ; but if your Society would like speci- 
mens, I shall have great pleasure in trying to procure them. I have 
a second tank now ready, and have told all the fishermen, should 
any more be taken, not to kill them, but to bring them to me, and 
that I will pay them their full value. They are usually killed; and 
the meat, which resembles beef or rather veal, is much sought after 
by the lower class of people; the skin also has many (supposed) 
virtues. They are caught in the ‘ corals’ made for catching fish, at 
the mouths of the rivers emptying into this harbour.” 
The Secretary announced that Mr. James Thompson, the Society’s 
Head Keeper, had reached Calcutta by the ‘ Hydaspes’ in safety, 
and that he had been singularly successful in taking out the birds 
presented by the Society to the Baboo Rajendra Mullick, having 
delivered them all alive and in firstrate condition, with the exception 
of a single Curassow. 
Mr. Fraser exhibited two pairs of Horns, male and female (be- 
longing to Capt. Stewart, now in India, but lent by Mr. Lillicrapp), 
of that extremely rare and extraordinary Ruminant, the Budorecas 
taxicolor, Hodgson, described in the ‘Journal of the Asiatic Society 
of Bengal’ (vol. xix. p. 65, pls. 1, 2, 3, 1850). 
The Secretary read the following extracts from a letter addressed 
to him by Mr. R, Swinhoe, F.Z.S., dated Formosa, February 9th, 
1864 :— oh 
** As I passed through Amoy, I was so fortunate as to secure for 
the Society a pair of Dampier Straits Pigs (wild species), a Suma- 
tran Jungle-Cock (Gallus furcatus), and a Mantchurian Deer, ap- 
parently of a new species, intermediate between Cervus sika of Japan 
and the Cervus taivanus. It was procured at Newchwang. These 
four animals I transmit to Hong Kong for transmission to England, 
and I hope they may eventually reach the Society all safe. At Hong 
Kong I saw a pair of the large Summer-Palace Deer, heads of which 
were exhibited to the Society by Mr. Leadbeater, and which Dr. J. 
E. Gray pronounced to be identical with Cervus elaphus of Europe. 
The pair in Hong Kong were two years old, and an inspection of 
them convinced me, from their similarity to the older and larger 
