264 Transactions. — Zoology. 



advantage in the method, namely, that it diminishes greatly the shrinldng 

 of the fins and other thin parts : adipose fins, for instance, retain their 

 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 

 other soft parts of birds. 



It will be obvious from what has been said that the glycerine jelly 

 process of preserving animal structures is slow, troublesome, and expensive. 

 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, etc., 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 spmt 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 experi- 

 ments is largely due to the skill and intelligence of my assistants, Messrs. 

 Jennings and Bourne. 



Art. XXXIV. — Notice of the Occurrence of the Eastern Golden Plover 

 (Charadrius fulvus) in the Auckland District. By T. F. Cheeseman, 

 F.L.S., Curator of the Auckland Museum. 



[Bead before the Auckland Institute, 13i/^ 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 avi- 

 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, are 

 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 Mr. 

 G. E. Gray (under the name of C. xanthocheilus, Wagl.), in his catalogue of 

 the birds of New Zealand, printed in vol. ii. of Dieffenbach's " New Zealand," 



