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on the recently described Guinea-fowl, Numida sabyi. 
Mr. Wallis then told us that he saw in the palace of the 
Bey of Tunis an ancient Roman mosaic on which two 
Guinea-fowls were recognizable. This led me to look up 
some of the literature about these birds in the time of the 
Romans, and it became clear to me that the bird which I 
described the other day must be the Guinea-fowl, or one 
of those which the Romans knew 2000 years ago. They 
called them, as a rule, Numidian Hens, and they were 
brought first to Greece and then to Italy by traders from 
Carthage, and they were said to be commonest near a lake 
inland of the Bay of Carthage. As Keller noticed, the 
Romans described their ground-colour as black, while it is 
greyish in our present domesticated race, which is just one 
of the differences between the latter and sabyi. I therefore 
conclude that Guinea-fowls were, in the time of the 
tomans, occurring from Marocco to Tunisia, According 
to Keller, Guinea-fowls had disappeared and become 
unknown in Europe in the Middle Ages, but were intro- 
duced again to western Europe from West Africa—perhaps 
tirst vid America—in the 16th century. It seems, however, 
that N. ptilorhyncha auct. was also known to the Romans, as 
Columbella (De rust. lib. 8, cap. 2) says that the Numidian 
Guinea-fowls differed from the “ Meleagrides” im having 
part of the head reddish and not blue. 
This also led me to consider what Linnzus’s Numida 
meleagris was. First of all, it is remarkable that not even 
Reichenow, who accepted the 10th edition of Linnzus, nor 
anyone ever quoted the first description, which is Phasianus 
meleagris, Syst. Nat. ed. 10, i. 1758, p. 159. The locality 
is “ Africa.” The first quotation is “ Hasselquist, Iter, 
p- 274.” Turning to the latter’we find a full description— 
in fact, the first real good description of any Numida ; but 
there can be no doubt that the species described is what we 
now call Numida ptilorhyncha, and it is clearly said that it 
came from Nubia, from where Nubian traders had brought 
the specimen described to Egypt. Starting afresh, I should 
