THE NORWICH MUSEUM. 85 



sessed by my late father, which has afforded pleasure even to those 

 who are not professed naturalists. Many of the specimens have 

 been described at one time or another in * The Ibis,' and some 

 are types of new species ; while others have a value of their own 

 as being the originals of Wolf's beautiful figures. Only a few of 

 the many mentioned by Mr. Southwell can be here noticed. 

 Case I. contains the Secretary Birds ; Case II. the Vultures. In 

 Case III. is a fine group of Californian Vultures, Pseudogryphus 

 calif ornianus, with nestling, skeleton, and egg, procured at the 

 same time as the pair in the British Museum ; a moribund 

 species, already so rare that when a skin comes into the market 

 it is advertised with the Great Auk and Labrador Duck ! Ridgway 

 calls it the peer of the Condor, and it is greatly to be regretted 

 that its destruction by poison is found necessary by stock-owners, 

 for there are now very few left. Another noble species probably 

 marked for extinction, in Europe at least, is the Lammergeyer, of 

 which there is a fine series of sixteen from different localities, 

 including the valley of Magna near Nice, Sardinia, Bagneres de 

 Bigorre (Philippe), Constantine (Dr. L. Burvey), Erzeroom (with 

 white scapular patches, perhaps incipient albinism), Landom, 

 Himalaya (Major Horsburgh), Tagalang Pass, Ladakh (Capt. 

 Adair), and Lamalmon, Abyssinia. Mr. Southwell reminds us of 

 the well-known story told by Pliny — how one of these birds, 

 mistaking the bald head of the poet iEschylus for a stone, 

 dropped a tortoise from on high, and caused the death of the poet. 



The finest of all the Sea Eagles, the deep-billed Kamtschatka 

 Sea Eagle, Thalassa'etus pelagicus, is represented by four mounted 

 skins and a nestling ; but the more recently described T. 

 branickii, which is black all over except the tail, is still a 

 desideratum in the Museum. Passing over the cosmopolitan 

 Ospreys, we come to Anderson's Pern ; an abnormal Buzzard, 

 with a small beak and a big mouth, from Africa, which created 

 some excitement thirty years ago, and was named by my father 

 Stringonyx andersoni (Trans. Zool. Soc. 1865, p. 117, pi. xxix.), 

 a generic appellation which proved to have been anticipated by 

 Machcerhamphus, Westerman, conferred on an allied species in the 

 Australian region. 



Three or four melanistic examples of Montagu's Harrier, 

 Circus cinerascens, which has the same curious tendency to 

 melanism as the Skua Gulls, are of interest, more particularly to 



