131 
October 11, 1842. 
R. H. Solly, Esq., in the Chair. 
An extract from a letter from the Society’s President, the Earl of 
Derby, was read. It announced that his Lordship had succeeded in 
hatching and partially rearing two young Fire-backed Pheasants 
(Euplocomus ignitus ? Auct.), and also four young Rheas. The young 
birds were alive and thriving at the time the letter was written, Oc- 
tober 6th, 1842. 
Mr. Gould exhibited and characterized the following thirty new 
species of Australian Birds :— 
Hirunpo neoxena. Hir. fronte, mento, guld, et pectore ferrugineo- 
rubris ; rectricum caude (rectricibus duabus intermediis exceptis), 
pogonio interno oblique,albo notato ; corpore supra metallice ceru- 
leo, subtis pallidé fuscescente. 
Forehead, chin, throat and chest rust-red ; head, back of the neck, 
back, scapularies, wing-coverts, rump and upper tail-coverts deep 
steel-blue ; wings and tail blackish brown; all but the two centre 
feathers of the latter with an oblique mark of white on the inner 
web ; under surface very pale brown; under tail-coverts pale brown, 
passing into an irregular crescent-shaped mark near the extremity, 
and tipped with white ; irides dark brown; bill and legs black. 
Total length, 6 inches; bill, $; wing, 42; tail, 3; tarsi, 3. 
Hab. The whole of the southern coast of Australia and Van Die- 
men’s Land. 
Messrs. Vigors and Horsfield considered this species to be iden- 
tical with the bird figured by Sparmann in the ‘ Museum Carlsonia- 
num’ under the name of Hirundo Javanica, which is there represented 
with a square tail, and which, if drawn correctly, is not only specifi- 
cally but generically distinct. Those gentlemen likewise considered 
it to be identical with the Hirondelle Orientale of M. Temminck’s 
* Planches Coloriées,’ but from which also I conceive it to be distinct. 
On the contrary, the swallow figured in Griffith’s edition of Cuvier’s 
‘ Animal Kingdom’ is certainly the Australian bird; but as the spe- 
cific term there given had been previously employed by Sparmann, 
as mentioned above, the necessity of a new name for the present 
bird has been forced upon me; and that of neovena has suggested 
itself as appropriate, from the circumstance of its appearance through- 
out the whole of the southern portions of Australia being hailed as a 
welcome indication of the approach of spring, and its arrival there 
associated with precisely the same ideas as those popularly enter- 
tained respecting our own pretty swallow in Europe. The two 
species are in fact beautiful representatives of each other, and assi- 
No. CXVII,—Proczrpines or THE ZooogicaL Sociery. 
