49 ['Vol. xxxix. 
the belly especially being whiter. The bill is shorter, but 
not, I consider, “ stronger” (as described by Tratz), than in 
P.m. occidentalis. The wing is on the average smaller, and 
the wing-formula is like that of the British form, the 2nd: 
primary being equal to or slightly shorter than the 7th. 
Mr, Witnersy also exhibited young in down of the 
Little Ringed Plover (Charadius d. curonicus) and the 
Kentish Plover (Ch. alexandrinus), which he had collected 
at Dunkerque, France, to show the distinct difference 
between the two. The dowrfy young of the Little Ringed 
Plover had a very marked black line round the back 
of the crown, while this line was altogether absent in the’ 
Kentish Plover in down. : 
Dr. Ernst Harrerr said he considered the Portuguese 
birds shown by Mr. Witherby of very great interest. 
Although we knew from Tait’s lists which species occurred 
in Portugal, the birds of that country had hitherto been 
very little studied with regard to their subspecies, and it 
was only recently that Reichenow and Tratz had described 
some of them as new forms. Altogether the ornis of the 
Iberian Peninsula was only superficially known. It could 
not, of course, be the political boundary between Spain and 
Portugal which separated various subspecies, but it would 
probably be found that the great mountain chain of the 
Sierra Guaderrama and Sierra de Grédos, with, further west, 
the Sierra de Gata and the Serra da Estrella in Portugal, 
would separate two faunal subdivisions. Thus it would 
transpire that northern Spain to about its middle and 
northern Portugal would have, in a number of cases, birds 
different from those of the southern half of Spain and 
Portugal, while a few forms might only occur north of the 
Cantabrian Mountains. Thus Dr. Hartert’s recent studies 
had shown that ‘“ Caccabis rufa hispanica,” more correctly 
Alectoris rufa hispanica, of Seoane, from Galicia and Asturia, 
was different from Alectoris rufa intercedens (A. E. Brehm), 
