332 LETTER FROM MR. W. H. HUDSON. [ May 26, 
a good species, identifying it with the black variety of the Common 
Hamster, Cricetus vulgaris, Desm., mentioned by several authors, 
and among them by Pallas, w ho (Zoogr. R.-As. i. pp- 161, 162) 
says of Caucasian examples, ‘‘ corpus subtus seepe griseo-contami- 
natum et macule laterales ad collum minus evidenter albee.” Upon 
this, in the following year, Prof. Brandt communicated to the Aca- 
demy of Sciences of St. Petersburg a fuller description of the ani- 
mal*, maintaining its specific validity and promising a figure of it, 
which, though spoken of four years later by Prof. von Nordmann, 
was, I suspect, never published. This naturalist adds that the 
species (the value of which he does not question) lives also ‘sur 
les montagnes de |’Awhasie”’ [Abasia]. About the same time Drs. 
Keyserling and Blasius included the species in their excellent book + 
but did not increase our knowledge of it. Three years later, Wagner, 
in the work already mentioned, recognized it without doubt as a 
good species; and the matter, if even then questionable, must be 
considered to have been finally set at rest by a subsequent contri- 
bution, in 1854, from Prof. Brandt to the St. Petersburg Academy, 
wherein § he described and showed by figures the cranial and dental 
differences existing between C. nigricans and C. vulgaris. 
The validity of the species being thus finally established, I think 
its occurrence so far to the westward of any previously recorded 
habitat may interest some members of the Society. I have only to 
add that Mr. Buckley informs me that his example was “one of a 
pair killed on the 27th of April, 1869, in a corn-field (the corn being 
about four inches high) at Shitangik, a station on the Varna and 
Rustchuk railway, in Bulgaria,’ and that ‘the animals were very 
slow in their movements.” 
May 26, 1870. 
G. R. Waterhouse, Esq., V.P., in the Chair. 
A fourth letter|| on the ornithology of Buenos Ayres, addressed to 
the Secretary by Mr. W. H. Hudson, C.M.Z.S., was read :— 
‘** Buenos Ayres, 
“ March 17, 1870. 
“*My pear Srr,—On the 9th of this month we were visited by a 
terrible storm, which lasted three days, a cold and violent south- 
west wind prevailing. After it had subsided, I could not but notice 
* Bull. Acad. Sc. St. Pétersbourg, i. (1836) p. 42. 
t Voy. Démidolf, Zoologie, i. p. 42. Paris: 1840. 
i | W irbelth. Eur. (Braunschweig, 1840), pp. 1x, 39. 
§ Bull. Phys. Math. Acad. Se. St. Pétersbourg, xiv. (1854) pp. 182-184. 
; See anted, p. 158. 
