144 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



instead of being greenish-purple as in the other species. This 

 albatross being undoubtedly the noblest of the entire group, he 

 selects for it the distinctive specific name of Diomedea regia. Its 

 great breeding-place is Campbell Island, where it nests some five 

 weeks earlier than Diomedea exulans does on the Auckland Islands. 

 Captain Fairchild, who has made the breeding habits of the albatross 

 his special study for some years past, was till lately of opinion that 

 this larger species never came farther north to breed ; but on the 

 occasion of his recent visit to the Auckland Islands, he found a colony 

 of them breeding there, but in a separate locality and quite distant 

 from Diomedea exulans. Here, too, in the Auckland Islands, the two 

 species observed their own breeding times, Diomedea regia actually 

 hatching out its young whilst the other species was only preparing to 

 lay. Amongst the hundreds of nests of the latter examined by 

 him only one contained eggs (two instead of one, a very unusual 

 circumstance). The author's collection c mtains a fine series of skins 

 of both species. Diomedea regia has a perfectly white head, neck, 

 and body, with blackish-brown shoulders and wings, even from the 

 ntst; one of the exhibits having still remnants of the down adhering 

 to the plumage. Apart from the much larger size of the bill 

 (exceeding eight inches, measured along the column), it is further 

 distinguished from the common species by having a distinct black 

 line along the cutting edge of the upper mandible. Diomedea exulans, 

 on the other hand, has a dark coloured nestling, and the young bird 

 of the first year has a uniform sooty-gray plumage, with a white face. 

 The bird passes through many phases in its progress towards 

 maturity, and no two individuals are exactly alike in the delicate 

 mra-kings of their plumage. In his ' Birds of New Zealand ' (vol. ii, 

 pp. 190-192), the author has described no less than ten of these 

 intermediate or transitional states. 



The following papers were then taken as read : — 



(5) " On the Fossil Flora of New Zealand," by Professor Van 

 Ettinghausen ; communicated by Sir James Hector, F.B.S. 



(6) " On Pleurophyllum, with description of New Species," by 

 T. Kirk, F.L.S. 



(7) '• On the New Zealand Species of Centrolepsis," by T. Kirk. 



(8) ' : On the Macrocephalous Olearias," by T. Kirk. 



(9) " Notes on certain Carices," by T. Kirk. 



(10) "Further Notes on New Zealand Fishes," by Sir James 

 Hector. 



(11) "On Patent Fuel," by Sir James Hector. 



(12) " On the Discovery of Leiodon Remains in Middle Waipara," 

 by J. McKay, F.G.S. 



(13) " On Belemnites australis with Dicotyledonous Leaves," by A. 

 McKay. 



(14) " On the Alleged Insular Character of Young Secondary and 

 Older Teitiary Formations in New Zealand," by A. McKay. 



(15) "On Lithological Characters in Sequence as a Means of 

 Cc-relation and as Indicative of Age," by A. McKay. 



