532 DR. C. J. FOESTTH MAJOR ON A LEMUEOID SKULL. [June 20, 



the breast of its parent. Early in the morning of the 22nd day 

 the keeper found the whole family, consisting of the two pai'ents 

 and four young ones, on the ground basking in the sun. 



" The young birds had beautiful glossy chocolate-brown down, 

 which became almost black on the back and lighter on the head. 

 The legs and beak were short and jet-black. 



" The little birds were wonderfully active and strong, and in the 

 evening they all managed to get up to the nest on the stones, 

 where they passed the night under one of the parent birds. The 

 mother bird was very anxious about the safety of her young, and if 

 anybody approached the aviary a sharp noise she made would 

 quickly send them away to hide between the stones. If one kept 

 motionless at some distance, the same note but a little softer 

 would call them to the light again. Both parents fed the young 

 in exactly the same way as Cranes do, bringing them ants' eggs, 

 flies, worms, or anything they thought fit, in their bills, which the 

 young would take from them. The little birds, now twelve days 

 old, grow very rapidly ; the legs and neck especially have lengthened 

 considerably, so that they begin to resemble their parents in form 

 very much. 



" They also have already acquired the habit of jerking their little 

 tails, which of course are nothing but down. The old birds, which 

 were very noisy at all times, even while incubating, and could sing 

 the most wondei'ful duets, have become perfectly silent since the 

 young were hatched. 



" The eggs were of a greyish yellow, with dark red and brown 

 spots and lines." 



Mr. Blaauw also stated that one of his female Darwin's Rheas 

 {Rhea darwini) had laid ten eggs, and that the male, after sitting 

 thirty-nine days on seven of them, had hatched three young ones. 



Dr. C. J. Forsyth Major exhibited a specimen of a subfossil 

 Lerauroid skull from Madagascar, and spoke as follows : — 



Very recently I have described ^ a strange gigantic Lemuroid 

 skull {Mer/aladcqns ■inada(jascnricnsis,'M.a.\.), discovered by Mr, Last 

 in a subfossil condition, together with remains of ^pyornis, 

 Testudo grandidieri, Vaill., Hippopotamus, &c., in a marsh on the 

 south-west coast of Madagascar. 



The skull exhibited on the present occasion, found by the same 

 collector in a similar condition in the neighbourhood of Nossi-Vey 

 (S.W. Madagascar), is in several respects not less strange, though 

 in a very different way. Owing to its incomplete state — the whole 

 facial portion being wanting, as well as the right occipital region 

 and basis cranii, and the greater part of the zygomatic arches — ^it 

 is not possible to enter into many details. 



The Lemuroid nature of the specimen is at once demonstrated 



by the great elongation and downward bending of the postorbital 



frontal processes, the left one of which has preserved the suture 



for the orbital process of the malar, thus showing that the osseous 



1 Proc. Eoy. Soc. liii. no. 326. 



