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EXHIBITIONS AND NOTICES. 



November 29th, 1910. 



Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., Vice-President, 

 in the Cliair. 



Dr. William Niooll, of the Lister Institute of Preventive 

 Medicine, gave a demonstration of his method for the collection 

 of Treaiatodes. 



Dr. R. T. Leiper, F.Z.S., exhibited two pliotograph.s and 

 some specimens showing the iSTematode infection known as 

 Onchocerciasis in beef imported from Queensland. 



Dr. J. F. Gemmill, M.A., D.Sc, Lecturer on Embi-jology in the 

 University of Glasgow, gave an account, illustrated by lantern- 

 slides and specimens, of his memoir on " The Development of 

 Solaster eiideca Forbes," communicated to the Society by Prof. 

 J. Arthur Thomson, F.Z.8. 



This memoir will be published entire in the Society's ' Trans- 

 actions ' in due course. 



Mr. D. Seth-Smith, F.Z.S., the Society's Curator of Birds, 

 exhibited living examples of the Australian Budgerigar or Un- 

 dulated Gi'ixss- Parrakeet (Melopsittamcs tondulatus),iiho\vmg three 

 colour-phases. The normal bird was mostly green, with a yellow 

 face, dark bai'ring across the occiput and back, and blue on the 

 tail-feathers. 



The yellow variety was now common as a cage-bii'd, and had 

 been known to occur in a wild state. In it the da,rk pigment had 

 disappeared and practically all trace of blue had been eliminated, 

 though some spots on the cheek, which in the normal bird weie 

 deep indigo-blue, retained a faint bluish tinge. 



The third variety was an extremely I'ai'e one, in which all the 

 yellow pigment had gone, leaving the bird almost entirely blue. 

 Those parts which in the noniial bird were green, were in this 

 variety pale blue, while the face, which was yellow in the normal 

 bird, was pure white. 



Blue Budgerigai'S a]:)peared to have been known in Belgium and 

 France some twenty-five or thirty years ago, as they were men- 

 tioned by Greene in his ' Parrots in Captivity ' (i. 11 7) and othei-s of 

 his books, and by Wiener in Cassell's ' Canaries and Ca^e Birds.' 

 The variety seemed to have been entirely lest sight of, however, 

 in this country at a,uy rate, until M. Pauw^els, a well-known 

 Belgian aviculturist, exhibited a pair at a bird-show held at the 

 Royal Horticultural Society's Hall at Westminster on November 

 25th-2Hth, 1910. This gentleman had several of these liirds, 

 which were said to breed ti'ue to type, but to pioduce a, pre- 

 ponderance of females. 



