418 Notices of Memoirs — The Pelican in Britain. 



Pike ; but three of them proved, on examination, to have belonged 

 to a Pelican, a bird which has been recorded on two previous 

 occasions from the same .part of the country. 



The first account was given by Professor Newton (Proc. Zool. 

 Soc, 1868, p. 2), and refers to a left humerus, in the Woodwardian 

 Museum at Cambridge. This specimen was described by Professor 

 Alphonse Milne Edwards in the AnnaJes des Sciences Naturelles 

 (5^ s6r., Zool., vol. viii, 1867, p. 285) ; and a translation of this 

 paper appeared in The Ibis (n.s., vol. iv, 1868, p. 363). Milne 

 Edwards described in detail the characters by which the humerus 

 of a Pelican can be distinguished, the great size of the bone being 

 alone an almost certain indication of the genus. He further pointed 

 out that the ossification of the specimen submitted to him was 

 incomplete at the articular extremities ; and that the bird was 

 therefore a young one, which was probably native to the Fens, and 

 not an accidental immigrant. 



A second left humerus from Feltwell Fen, in Norfolk, was 

 presented in 1871 to the University Museum of Zoology by 

 Mr. J. H. Gurney, jun., to whom it was given by Mr. John Baker, 

 the well-known Cambridge birdstuffer. In exhibiting it to the 

 Zoological Society, Professor Newton called attention (Proc. Zool. 

 Soc, 1871, p. 702) to its correspondence in size with the humerus 

 of a recent specimen believed to belong to Felecanus crispus. 



The bones which have recently been acquired by the University 

 Museum of Zoology were found at Littleport, near Ely. They were 

 formerly in the possession of James L. Luddiugton, Esq., who has 

 been kind enough to inform roe that they were found on his farm 

 in Burnt Fen, Littleport, some seven or eight years ago. They 

 consist of the lower end of a humerus and the upper ends of a 

 radius and ulna, all of the left side, and appearing to belong to the 

 same individual. The conclusion that these are the associated 

 bones of a single specimen is quite in accordance with previous 

 experience of the way in which the bones of various animals are 

 found in the peat of the Fens. 



The humerus of the Littleport specimen agrees closely with the 

 Feltwell bone, and the three Littleport bones have the closest 

 resemblance, in form and size, to the corresponding bones of the 

 recent P. crispus, to which reference has already been made. The 

 ulna is, however, abnormal at a distance of 11 or 12 cm. from its 

 uj^per or proximal end, and it has the appearance of having been 

 broken, although the fracture was repaired during the life of the 

 bird. The part of the ulna which is preserved measures only 

 16 cm., so that the whole of the injured region of the bone is not 

 A'isible. The resemblance, in other respects, between the Littleport 

 bones and those of the recent P. crispus certainly lends support to 

 the view hinted at by Professor Newton in 1871, and repeated on 

 page 703 of his " Dictionary of Birds " (part iii, 1894), that the 

 Fen specimens belonged to that species. 



It is worthy of remark that a left humerus has been found on 

 each of the three occasions on which the remains of a Pelican have 



