34 MR. P. L. SCLATER ON THE LEPIDOSIREN. [Jan. 23, 



incisors in these Marsupials ; nor does it even express either so defi- 

 nitely or clearly some of the peculiarities of the movement as ob- 

 servations which we have quoted at length. 



January 23, 1866. 



Dr. J. E. Gray, F.R.S., V.P., in the Chair. 



Mr. P. L. Sclater exhibited an egg of the One-carunculated Cas- 

 sowaiy (Casuarius uniappendiculatus, Blyth), laid by the female bird 

 in the Zoological Gardens, Amsterdam. The egg was of the usual 

 form and colour of the eggs of the genus Casuarius, being of a pale 

 green, thickly covered with raised spots of dark green, and mea- 

 suring 5 - 4 by 3 - 6 inches. 



Mr. Sclater called the attention of the Society to the great scarcity 

 in European collections of specimens of the American Lepidosiren 

 (Lepidosiren paradoxa). But two examples of this creature had 

 been obtained by Natterer, its original discoverer, — one from a water- 

 ditch near Borba on the Madeira, where it appeared to be known to 

 the inhabitants by the name " Caramuru ;" the other in a marsh on 

 the right bank of the Amazons, above Villa Nova. These specimens 

 were now in the Imperial Zoological Cabinet at Vienna. 



The only other travellers who appeared to have met with this sin- 

 gular form were MM. Castelnau and Deville, who obtained a single 

 specimen of a Lepidosiren from a lake on the Ucayali, which M. de 

 Castelnau, in the volume devoted to the fishes collected by his expe- 

 dition, has referred to a second species of the genus, under the name 

 L. dissimilis. 



Neither Mr. Wallace nor Mr. Bates had obtained specimens of 

 this animal during their Amazonian wanderings. Mr. Wallace had 

 only heard of it. Mr. Bates had replied as follows in answer to Mr. 

 Sclater's inquiries on the subject : — 



" What I have to tell you about the Lepidosiren of the Amazons 

 is very little. Judging from my experience (having made constant 

 inquiries about it during the three years I was living in the proper 

 localities, without obtaining a specimen), it is not easy to get ; but 

 another traveller, having means of obtaining a good boat's crew during 

 the dry months (which I had not), might be more successful. I ex- 

 hibited drawings to many native fishermen, and they recognized the 

 Lepidosiren as a fish they occasionally find in the mud at the bottom 

 of the great lakes when they spend the dry seasons in harpooning 

 and salting Pirarecu (Sudis ffiffas). They call it in the Tupi lan- 

 guage ' Tamba/a-mboya,' i. e. Tambaki (a very common eatable fish, 

 of the family Characini), mboya, false, it being scaled similarly to the 



