456 Asiatic Society. [No. 125. 



Among the specimens procured in the neighbourhood, 1 shall only notice 

 Pachysoma marginatum, which I find is of common occurrence in this vicinity. 



Aves. 



Lieutenant Tickell's Birds consist of 120 specimens, which are referrible to eighty- 

 one species, twenty -seven of which are new to the Society's Museum, and have ena- 

 bled me to identify many of those described by Major Franklin and Colonel Sykes, 

 (in the ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society' for 1831 and 1832.) I distinguish such 

 as are new to our Museum by an asterisk. 



Paloeornis Alexandrinus : female. 



P. torquatus, ditto. 



Falco luggur, Jerdon, ditto. 



F. tinnunculus. 



* Aquila Vindhiana,* Franklin, P. Z. S., 1831, 114. 



* Spizcetus (Vieillot) albogularis, Tickell; genus Nisaetus, Hodgson, J. A. S., V. 

 228. Length twenty-two inches, or rather more, of wing from bend sixteen inches, 

 and tail ten inches; bill over curve (including cere) one inch and three-quarters to 

 forehead, and one inch and five-eighths from point of upper mandible to gape ; tarse 

 three inches, and feathered to the toes. General colour of the upper parts black, 

 with a shade of brown; the nuchal feathers white at base, and the occipital prolonged 

 to form a crest two inches and a half in length : throat, fore-neck, and breast pure 

 white, the sides of the last having a narrow black central streak to each feather : belly, 

 flanks, under tail-coverts, fore-part of the under-surface of the wings, and plumage of 

 the legs, deep rufous, darkest on the lengthened tibial feathers, and streaked longitudi- 

 nally with black on the sides, the posterior feathers of which (under the wing) are 

 wholly dusky-black; rest of the wing albescent underneath, the terminal portion of the 

 primaries, beyond the emargination of their inner vanes, barred inferiorly with black, 

 and chiefly on the inner vanes, the outer but very faintly so ; and tail brownish above, 

 the central feathers darkest, and albescent like the wings on its under-surface, which 



" I have already remarked how fond the young one was of climbing, and this, coupled with what 

 I have just now related, makes me not doubt that, if circumstances should require it, they climb 

 trees in the wild state with the same agility." 



The mode of walking upon the knuckles, with the claws bent upwards and inwards to the leg, is 

 common to both genera, though confined to the fore-feet in Myrmecophaga, whereof the trenchant 

 claws are however better protected, being received into a groove, while a callous pad projects to 

 increase the surface upon which the animal treads. The fossil genera Megatherium, Megalonyx, 

 and Ccelodon, would appear to have advanced on the ground in the same manner as their recent allies 

 the Myrmecophagce, being intermediate to these animals and the Sloths, and especially, it would 

 seem, approximating the diminutive two-toed Anteater; and as this South American group is 

 represented in the Old World by the Pangolins, which likewise have enormous fossil congeners, 

 so the other great American group of Armadilloes, with their huge fossil allies (the Hoplophorus, 

 Lund, vel. Glyptodon, Owen, &c), is represented in Africa by Orycteropus ; and who shall say, 

 when the fossil treasures of that grand continent shall have been exhumed, what mighty creatures 

 of the past bearing that affinity to the existing Orycteropus, which the giant Pangolins and huge 

 Edentata buried in other continents do to their existing analogues of the same regions, may once 

 more glory in the light, to uphold the classic fame of Africa as the ' ' land of monsters ?" 



* I regret to add that this and several other specimens have since been utterly destroyed by 

 the Dermestes, their skins not having been poisoned, while other and poisoned skins that 

 were with them have totally escaped injury. — E. B. 



