88 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 



wise of rare occurrence in the British seas; and another Australian 

 petrel had lately been added to the list of stragglers from other regions, 

 which have found their way into this country. In Mr. Gould's intro- 

 duction to his magnificent work, " The Birds of Australia," a case is re- 

 corded of the great spiny- tailed swift of Australia having been procured 

 " in the flesh " in England ; but Mr. Blyth did not think much of the 

 occasional occurrence of that bird, because it is common both in the 

 Himalaya and in China. He was quite aware that distinctive differences 

 of the most trivial kind had been suggested ; but be happened to koow 

 that those supposed differences are not constant, but individual merely, 

 and that precisely the same small differences of coloration occur in dif- 

 ferent individuals of the large spiny-tailed swift of Southern India and 

 Ceylon, and of the Malay countries — Acanthylis giganteus. A small 

 Australian Ring-plover {Charadrius nigrifrons) had been once known 

 to occur in the Indian peninsula ; and many of the Australian wading- 

 birds occur more or less commonly in China. A very fine specimen of 

 Catarracta pomarina, in full mature plumage, had been obtained near 

 Moulmein, in one of the Tenesserim provinces of British Burmah, and 

 it was exceedingly rare to obtain that northern bird in its adult plumage 

 even in the latitude of the British Islands. Mr. Blyth had himself pro- 

 cured the Phalaropus fulicarim at Calcutta ; and his friend Dr. T. 

 Stewart had obtained the Lobipes hyperboreus near Madras. How 

 many North American birds, even land birds, had contrived to find 

 their way across the Atlantic to Ireland, especially, as might be supposed 

 from its comparative geographical proximity ! In Amesbury Park, in 

 "Wiltshire, there had actually been shot the golden-winged woodpecker 

 of the United States, Colaptes auratus ; and, at all events, he had never 

 heard of a woodpecker being imported in a cage. Such instances con- 

 tinue to accumulate as critical observation extends ; but it seems a little 

 absurd to add all such chance-comers to the list of what properly con- 

 stitutes the British Fauna. 



With regard to the spotted pigeon, to specimens of which the atten- 

 tion of the meeting had been directed by the President, and which Mr. 

 Blyth remarked that he had himself been the first to distinguish as a parti- 

 cular race, occurring in the south of England, by the name Columba affinis 

 (as noticed in the "Proceedings" of this Society March 6th, 1863),* 

 he stated that he had now been long aware that it was no other than 

 the common dove-cot race, which was bred in multitudes to be turned 

 out at pigeon matches, which accounted for the grdat number of shot 

 birds of this particular variety of C. Uvia which are commonly exposed 

 for sale in the London markets. There are many local races, sub- 

 species, or, perhaps, "incipient species," in the language of Mr. Darwin, 

 each of which occupies its own area upon the earth's surface, or rather 

 he would say that portion of the northern hemisphere in which the 

 greater part of the major continent is situate. There is a C. turretum 



* " Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Dublin," vol. iv. (Part I.), p. 42. 



