Proceedings of the British Association. 135 



sentation of these birds in the less ancient monuments of Egypt, 

 it may also be reasonably conjectured, they disappeared soon after the 

 period of the erection of these tombs. With respect to the relation 

 these facts bear to each other, I beg to remark that the colossal 

 nests of Capts. Cook and Flinders, and also those of Mr. James 

 Burton, were all on the sea shore, and all of those about an equal 

 distance from the equator. But whether the Egyptian birds, as 

 described in those very ancient sculptures, bear any analogy to those 

 recorded in the last pages of the great stone book of Nature (the new 

 red sandstone formation), or whether they bear analogy to any of the 

 species determined by Prof. Owen from the New Zealand fossils, 

 I am not qualified to say, nor is it indeed the object of this paper 

 to discuss ; the intention of which being rather to bring together 

 these facts, and to associate them with that recorded at Gezah, 

 in order to call the attention of those who have opportunity of making 

 further research into this interesting matter." 



Mr. H. Strickland remarked, that the instances of gigantic birds, 

 both recent and fossil, enumerated by M. Bonomi, though interesting 

 in themselves, had little or no mutual connexion. The artists of 

 ancient Egypt were wont to set the laws of perspective and propor- 

 tion at defiance, so that the fact of the birds, here represented, being 

 taller than the men who were leading them by no means implied the 

 former existence of colossal birds in Egypt. Indeed, in this very 

 painting the foot of a human figure is introduced, probably that of a 

 prince or hero, whose proportions are as much larger than those of 

 the birds in question as the other human figures are smaller. He 

 considered the birds here figured to be either storks, or demoiselle 

 cranes, or egrets, all of which are common in Egypt. The gigantic 

 nests found by Mr. Burton on the coast of the Red Sea deserved fur- 

 ther examination ; but the size of a nest by no means implied that 

 the bird which formed it was large also, for the Australian Megapo- 

 dius, a bird not larger than a fowl, makes a nest of enormous pro- 

 portions. 



Mr. Thompson read a communication, from Messrs. Alder and 

 Hancock, f On a New Genus of Mollusca Nudibranchiata' This 

 new genus is founded on the Tritonia arborescens of authors and its 

 allies, which are distinguished from the true Tritonia (T. Hombergii, 



