318 Miscellanies. 



of buff color, ill wanting the white spot on the chest, and some other 

 characters ; two distinct black marks, margined above with white, are 

 observable on the sides of the body. The name lateralis was given 

 to this animal, and to the last species Mr. Gould gave the name psilo- 

 pus, on account of the smallness of its fore feet and legs ; this animal 

 resembles the common hare in size, and also in the coloring and tex- 

 ture of the fur ; so much so, indeed, that a portion of its skin could 

 not be distinguished from that of a hare : its fore legs are black. 

 Macropus Jrenatus was discovered in the interior of New South 

 Wales ; M. unguifer on the northwest coast ; M. lateralis and M. 

 lunatus on the west coast; and M. psilopus in the interior of Austra- 

 lia. Mr. Gould also exhibited a remarkable spring lizard, allied to 

 the Agamus, which he had procured from Swan River. He then called 

 the attention of the members to an extraordinary piece of bird-archi- 

 tecture, which he had ascertained to be constructed by the satin bird, 

 Ptilonorhynchus holosericeus, and another, of similar structure, but 

 still larger, by the Chlamydera maculata. These constructions, Mr. 

 Gould states, are perfectly anomalous in the architecture of birds, and 

 consist in a collection of pieces of stick and grass formed into a 

 bower ; or one of them (that of the Chlamydera) might be called an 

 avenue, being about three feet in length, and seven or eight inches 

 broad inside ; a transverse section, giving the figure of a horse-shoe, 

 the round part being downwards. They are used by the birds as a 

 playing-house, or "run," as it is termed, and the male birds use them 

 to attract the females. The " run" of the satin bird is much smaller, 

 being less than one foot in length, and moreover differs from that just 

 described, in being decorated with the highly colored feathers of the 

 Parr tribe : the Chlamydera, on the other hand, collects around its 

 " run" a quantity of stones, shells, bleached bones, &c. ; they are also 

 strewed down the center within. Mr. Gould spent much time in ob- 

 serving the habits of those birds, and was fully satisfied that the runs 

 were actually formed by them, and constructed for the purposes de- 

 scribed. — Ibid. 



24. Proceedings of the Tenth Meeting of the British Association. — 

 This meeting was held at Glasgow, in Sept. 1840. Our abstract of its 

 proceedings is unavoidably postponed to the next number. 



25. Necrology. — At the last anniversary meeting of the Linnsean 

 Society of London, held May 25th, 1840, (the anniversary of the 

 birth of Linnaeus,) the President, according to the usual custom, 

 opened the business of the meeting by stating the number of mem- 

 bers which the Society had lost by death during the past year, with 



