140 Scientific Intelligence. 
fauna. Parrots and trogons inhabited the woods; swallows built 
in the fissures of the rocks nests in all pr obability like those now 
found in certain _ ts of Asia and the Indian archipelago. A 
secretary bird nearly allied to that of the Cape of Good Hope 
sought in the plains the serpents and reptiles which at that time, 
as now, must have furnished its nourishment. Large tre 
cranes, flamingoes, the sone oh (birds of curious forms, part 
both of the characters of the flamingoes and nite a Gralle), 
and ibises frequented ‘the banks of the water-courses where the 
midst of the lakes; and, lastly, sand-grouse and numerous 
> seein noe birds assisted in giving to this ornithological popula- 
tion a physiognomy with which it is impossible not to be struck, 
and ick recalls to one’s mind the descriptions which Livingstone 
has given us of certain lakes of southern Africa. 
e list I have given of the birds whose existence I have ascer- 
. in the part of the “spare lakes the alluvium of —_— hee 
formed the deposits of St. Géraud le Puy, of Vaumas, &ec., 
which are only represented in my collection by a single bone 
or meee a few bones. The species most frequently met with are 
left 
mete as now, birds had preferences for certain places, certain 
-, from which they de — pie —- The little diver 
h 
the genera Totanus and Tringa, whilst Elorius and Himantopus 
are represented by few indbvictiate I have found numerous bones 
of the ibis, and in particular of the eaibogintaeete estas Hee 5 the 
four other species of the latter —— re by no means so common. 
. The cranes are rare; their bones are almost always broken and 
often injured by the teeth of rodents, as if they had lain for a long 
time on the bank before being carried to the bottom of the lake. 
The rails, the gallinaceous birds, the pigeons, the sand-grouse, the 
passerine birds, the raptores, and the parrots have left but few 
traces of their existence. These bi rds, from their mode of life, did 
not remain continually on the shores of the lakes or water-courses ; 
their — might be eaten or destroyed at once, and it would 
d a concurrence of exceptional circumstances for them to be 
