4 MR, D. SETH-SMITH ON A NESTLING REGENT-BIRD. 



Mr. James Dunbar-Brunton sent for exhibition two skins and 

 a mounted skull, with horns, of Bushbuck shot by him in North- 

 East Rhodesia. 



Mr. VV. B. Cotton, of the Indian Civil Service, exhibited a 

 number of lieads and horns of various species of Gazelles which 

 he had obtained in the Eastern Sudan, and gave a brief account 

 of their habits and distribution. The specimens included 

 Gazella isahella, fx'om the hills behind Suakin and the route 

 from Sinkat to Kassala, and eleven speciixiens, of which he under- 

 stood nine to be Gazella tilonura and two to be Gazella rufifrons, 

 from the Atbara, Settit, and Rahad. 



Mr. Cotton mentioned that some sportsmen believed isahella to 

 be identical with dorcas, and advanced a decided opinion that 

 tilonura was merely a local form of rujifrons. This opinion was 

 fortified by consideration of the extreme variation of type in the 

 specimens exhibited, of which all but one had come from the 

 same locality, namely the Atbara and Settit. 



Mr, D. Seth-Smith, F.Z.S., Curator of Birds, exhibited a 

 spirit-specimen of a nestling Austi-alian Regent-Bird [Sericulus 

 melinus) (text-fig. 1), which had been hatched in the aviary of 

 Mr. Reginald Phillipps, of 26 Cromwell Grove, West Kensington, 

 during the past summer. The male parent of this bird was also 

 bred in the same aviary in 1906, and is the only specimen of this 

 fine Bower-Bird ever bi'ed and reared to maturity in captivity. 



Text-fig. 1. 



#n^ 



Sericuhis melinus, ten da3s old. 



Two young birds were hatched this year (1911), but succumbed 

 to the eftect of a thunderstorm in July, when about ten days old. 

 The nestling is chiefly remarkable for the length and thickness 

 of tlufty down on the feather tracts, especial!}^ upon tlie head. 



