I860.] Zoology and Animal Physiology. 515 



At the ordinary meeting of the Society, many interesting papers 

 have been read. Mr. Sclater's communications pointed out the 

 accessions to the menagerie, and incidents of interest which from 

 time to time took place, such as the laying of eggs by the rarer birds. 

 Not so many birds as usual appear to have fallen to the lot of Mr. 

 Sclater for description, the chief being a new genus of Passerine 

 birds from Madagascar, and a new species from British Guiana. Dr. 

 Gray's papers have chiefly had reference, as usual, to mammals, and 

 the porpoise, which lately died in the menagerie, afforded a text for 

 an interesting communication. It was remarkable for having a row 

 of tubercles on the upper margin of the dorsal fin. This structure 

 did not appear to have been previously noticed in the common 

 porpoise, although a species from South America, lately described by 

 Dr. Burmeister, possessed it in a highly-developed degree. This 

 latter species was taken alive at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, 

 and described by Burmeister as a new species, under the name of 

 Phoccena spinipinnis. Further examination of the British specimen 

 showed that it possessed a striking difference from the common 

 porpoise in the shape of the occipital foramen, and has induced Dr. 

 Gray to consider it as a new species, which he calls P. tuberculifera. 

 A useful revision of the insectivorous Edentata has also been pre- 

 pared by Dr. Gray from the specimens in the British Museum, 

 amongst which he has found two species heretofore undescribed. A 

 notice of a new species of porcupine from South America, and of a 

 genus of tortoise from West Africa, are also among Dr. Gray's con- 

 tributions. 



Mr. E. S. Layard, a brother of the Under-secretary, resident at 

 Cape Town, is from time to time adding new material to Zoological 

 Science, and now sends accounts of two whales in the South African 

 Museum, which Dr. Gray considers to be new species, and calls 

 Ziphins Layardii, and Hyperbodon capensis. He also sends a de- 

 scription of a new zebra discovered by Mr. Chapman in the interior 

 of S. W. Africa. 



Professor Huxley has described his researches into the anatomy of 

 bats, in the genus Desmodus, of which he has found a singular form 

 of stomach, in which the cardiac end of this organ assumes the form 

 of a greatly elongated caecum reflexed upon itself. This character, 

 added to peculiarities of dentition, seems to him to indicate the 

 necessity of constituting this genus, with the allied form Diphylla, in 

 a separate section of the Order of Bats. 



Tbe remarkable discovery of a preserved Dinornis, now in the 

 York Museum, has given Mr. Dallas, the Curator, an opportunity of 

 examining the feathers of that extinct bird. He has given a full 

 description of their structure, and shows that the remnants of the 

 large accessory plume attached to each feather manifests a near 

 relationship between Dinornis, and the Emeus and Cassowaries. Mr. 

 Newton exhibited and described a number of hitherto unknown, or 

 little known, birds' eggs. Among them were those of the tooth-billed 

 pigeon, the Opisthocomus, and the nutcracker, &c. He believed that 

 the eggs of the nutcracker (Niirifraga caryoeatactes) which had been 



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