42 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETf OF DUBLIN: 



that those birds frequent. Five specimens obtained there are in thg 

 collection of the Society. Mr. Edward Blyth, Curator of the Asiatic 

 Society's Museum, was the first to draw attention to the occurrence and 

 distinction of that Pigeon on the south coast of England, as differing 

 much from the Bock Pigeon, C. livia. He designates it C. maculoria, 

 In drafts for a Eaunalndica,* with reference to C. intermedia (Strickland). 

 he (Mr. Blyth) describes the characteristics of the wing coverts, and the 

 spotting of the bird. He alludes to a race of wild Pigeons which are 

 abundantly brought at times to the London markets, all of them shot 

 birds. These have not the two black bands on the wing well defined, 

 as seems to be regularly the case in the variety of C intermedia. He 

 suspects that the wild Bock Pigeons of the south of England are mostly 

 of the kind alluded to, which may be designated as C. affinis, while 

 those of North Britain, and it would seem of Europe generally, are true 

 C. livia. The birds of Sybil Head are identical with the characteristics 

 given of C. affinis. 



The following paper was then read : — 



Notes on the Dissections oe some Animals from the Zoological 

 Gardens, Phoenix Park. By Arthur Wynne Foot, M. B. 



These dissections were undertaken chiefly with the object of ascertaining 

 the cause of death in tbe animals which are lost from time to time in the 

 Zoological Gardens, and were made in the Boyal Dublin Society, under 

 the superintendence of Dr. Alexander Carte, the Director of the Society's 

 Museum. The first animal to be mentioned was a male Alligator, 

 {Lucius), three feet eight inches in length; it was reported to have 

 been in the habit of vomiting its food before death. The stomach, of a 

 globular shape, was the size of an orange and distended with air; it 

 contained 115 worms of the genus Ascaris, averaging in length from 

 three to four inches ; about one half of them had spirally convoluted 

 tails ; it also contained ten small pebbles and sharp-pointed flints, (one 

 of which was seven lines long); three pieces of charcoal (one of which 

 was thirteen lines in length) ; and a soft pale coagulum, with some 

 yellowish viscid mucus which had an acid reaction. The inner coat of 

 the stomach was studded with numerous irregular depositions of a fine 

 yellow sabulous matter, slightly elevated, varying in extent from the 

 size of a pea to that of a sixpence. These incrustations gave to the 

 finger the sensation of fine sandpaper, and were firmly adherent to the 

 mucous coat of the stomach, so as not to be removable without separa- 

 tion of the subjacent tissue. In the neighbourhood of the oesophageal 

 opening, the mucous membrane was extensively raised in a villous 

 papillated manner, but here the sabulous deposit was not found. There 

 was no symmetry in the arrangement of the incrustation; it gave the 

 interior of the stomach the appearance of having been thickly sown 



" Annals of Natural History," vol. xix., p. 102. 



