SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 107 



bones of Nestor meridional is and Nanodes discolor. As the presence of a 

 parahyal arch had as yet only been met with in the Loriidce, it was 

 interesting to find whether it was present in the other brush-tongued forms, 

 Nestor and Nanodes. In the specimen of Nestor examined, such an arch 

 did exist, and the location of the Nestoridce next to Loriidce was so far 

 justified. In two specimens of Nanodes, however, the two processes did 

 not form an arch, and thus its removal from the Loriidce was also justified. 



February 18^.— Prof. G. B. Howes, F.L.S., F.Z.S., in the chair. 



A report was read, drawn up by Mr. A. Thomson, the Society's Head- 

 keeper, on the insects bred in the Insect-house during the season of 1895. 

 Examples of nine species of Lepidoptera were stated to have been exhibited 

 for the first time in 1895. 



A communication was read from Dr. A. G. Butler on the Butterflies 

 obtained in Arabia and Somaliland by Capt. Nurse and Col. Yerbury in 

 1894-98. 



A communication was read from Lord Walsingham and Mr. G. F. 

 Hampson, on the Moths collected at Aden and Somaliland by the same 

 naturalists and by other collectors. 



Mr. F. E. Beddard communicated (on behalf of Miss Marion Newbigin) 

 a paper dealing with the metallic colours of Humming-birds and Sun-birds. 

 It had been held that these peculiarly coloured feathers played some special 

 part in the economy of the bird, for they could not be of much use for 

 flight owing to the disconnected barbules. The author combated this view, 

 pointing out in the first place that the statement of fact did not apply to all 

 Humming-birds, in the metallic feathers of which the barbules were often 

 connected by cilise. It was urged in the next place that the very perfection 

 of the flight of Humming-birds led to correlated variations in feather-struc- 

 ture productive of their especially brilliant metallic tints. The difficulty 

 of the plain-coloured Swifts — possibly near allies of the Humming-birds — 

 was met by the suggestion that the latter have fewer enemies, and had 

 therefore had greater scope of possible colour-variation. 



Mr. C. W. Andrews read a note on a skull of Orycteropus gaudryi, an 

 extinct species of Ant-bear from the Lower Pliocene deposits of Samos, 

 originally discovered and described by Dr. C. J. Forsyth-Major. Except in 

 size, and in some slight differences in the cranial bones and teeth, which were 

 pointed out in the paper, the extinct form closely resembled Orycteropus 

 cethiopicus from East Africa. The former range of Orycteropus was much 

 greater than its present distribution, for its remains had been found so far 

 east as Maragha in Persia, and the fauna with which it is associated both 

 there and in Samos extended from Spain probably to Southern China. It 

 seemed, therefore, that though the genus was now exclusively ^Ethiopian, 

 it might have had a northern origin, and have spread into Africa along with 

 the rest of the Plioceue fauna. 



