1886. | MR. O. THOMAS ON CRANIAL VARIATION. 125 
took refuge amongst the leaves of a fresh plant. Although they have 
not fed, they seem to be lively and doing well’. 
Mr. Sclater exhibited a specimen of the new Paradise Bird, 
Paradisornis rudolphi, lately discovered in the Owen Stanley 
Mountains of New Guinea by Mr. Hunstein, and described and 
figured by Drs. Finsch and Meyer in a recent number of the 
‘Zeitschrift fiir die Gesammte Ornithologie’ (1885, p. 385), and 
pointed out the characters in which it differs from typical Paradisea. 
The Secretary exhibited on behalf of Mr. L. Taczanowski, C.M.Z.S., 
the skin of an Owl from the south-east of the Ussuri country, on the 
frontiers of Corea, which appeared to be referable to Budo blakistoni, 
Seebohm, P.Z.S. 1883, p. 466, and Ibis, 1884, p. 42 et p. 183, 
1. vi. 
: Two adult females of this Owl had been obtained by Mr. J. 
Kalinowsky, during his recent stay in Kamtschatka, from the 
environs of the river Sidemi in Russian Mantchuria, on the frontiers 
of Corea, where they were collected in the latter part of May 1885. 
They appeared to agree with Japanese specimens of B. blakistoni in 
the National Collection, where Mr. Sharpe had kindly made the 
comparisons. 
Mr. Edward Gerrard, Juu., exhibited specimens of the heads and 
skulls of two African Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceros bicornis and R. simus), 
obtained by Mr. Selons in Mashuna-land, and mounted for the 
South-African Museum, Capetown. 
Prof. Ray Lankester exhibited and made remarks on a drawing 
of a restoration of Archeopteryx. 
The following papers were read :— 
1. Notes on a striking instance of Cranial Variation due to 
Age. By Oxprietp Tuomas, Natural History Museum, 
[Received February 16, 1886. ] 
(Plate XI.) 
Dr. Gulliver, of St. Thomas’s Hospital, has recently submitted to 
me for determination three skulls from Canada, collected by Mr. 
Hayden. The skulls turn out to be referable to the fairly common 
Canadian Marten or Pekan (Mustela pennanti, Erxl.), but they 
show to such a remarkable extent the cranial changes that occur in 
* See Miss Hopley’s account of this event in ‘Nature,’ vol. xxxiii, p. 295. 
