264 Transactions.—Zoology. ] 
advantage in the method, namely, that it diminishes greatly the shrinking 
of the fins and other thin parts :* adipose fins, for instance, retain their q 
form very satisfactorily. It is possible that the same method, or some | 
modification of it, may be applicable to the preservation of the wattles and a 
other soft parts of birds. i 
It will be obvious from what has been said that the glycerine jelly 7 
process of preserving animal structures is slow, troublesome, and expensive. q 
It will, therefore, probably never be very widely used, although the simplified 
modification of it described in section 4 should, I think, quite supersede the 
ordinary method of merely drying the specimens. But even the more 
complicated process is well worth the trouble it gives if it provides the 
museum or the zoological laboratory with a small series of type-skeletons of 
Elasmobranchs, Ganoids, Amphibia, ete., which can be handled like ordinary 
skeletons, and at the same time have their form almost unaltered, instead 
of being either in the form of spirit specimens or in that of the shapeless 
and brittle abominations which usually do duty for the skeletons of 
cartilaginous fishes. : 
In conclusion it is only right to mention that the success of my experl- 
ments is largely due to the skill and intelligence of my assistants, Messrs. 
Jennings and Bourne. 
Aer, XXXIV.—Notice of the Occurrence of the Eastern Golden Plover 
(Charadrius fulvus) in the Auckland District. By T. F. CHeesEMay, 
F.L.S., Curator of the Auckland Museum. 
[Read before the Auckland Institute, 13th June, 1881.] 
Few birds have a wider geographical range than the Eastern Golden Plover 
(Charadrius fulvus). Drs. Finsch and Hartlaub, in their work on the “ 
fauna of Central Polynesia, give an excellent sketch. of its distribution. 
According to them, it ranges along the whole of the eastern shores of Asia, 
from Northern Siberia and Kamtschatka through Japan and China to the 
Malay Archipelago and India. Eastwards and southwards, it extends to 
New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania, and has been recorded from almost 
every group of islands in Polynesia. Its breeding quarters, however, 08 
confined to Northern Asia, and it thus exists as a migrant only in countries 
to the south of China. 
The Golden Plover was first recorded from New Zealand by the late ok 
G. R. Gray (under the name of C. xanthocheilus, Wagl.), in his catalogue : - 
the birds of New Zealand, printed in vol. ii. of Dieffenbach’s “New Zealand, 
