president’s address. 
3 
breed there, gave us a graphic description of bird-life on that 
romantic spot. So crowded are the Guillemots on the basaltic 
pillars, that it seems wonderful their eggs do not roll into the 
sea ; from this, their tapering shape preserves them. The marvel- 
lous elasticity of the down used by the Eider Ducks in the 
construction of their nests is also alluded to. At the October 
meeting Mr. Gurney exhibited a Dabchick, which had been 
choked by trying to swallow a Miller’s Thumb. In the month of 
November he gave us a very interesting account of the habits of 
the Night-jar, accompanied by illustrations. The bristles on the 
bill of this bird, popularly supposed to aid it in catching insects, 
are more probably to assist the bird in the utterance of its familiar 
note, the bristles producing the prolonged jarring sound. An 
American species, which has no bristles, produces no “jarring." 
The old bird has a habit of feigning being wounded, to attract 
intruders from its young and eggs. At the final meeting Mr. Gurney 
exhibited a specimen of the Tawny Pipit {Anthws 
netted near Lowestoft. 
Colonel Feilden, in the month of May, sent us an admirable 
paper on the Diablotin of the West Indies, supposed to be 
identical with the Capped Petrel ( CE<tre/a(a ha-sitata), the only 
British example of which was captured in Norfolk in 1852. 
Colonel Feilden, after citing various extracts from the old writers 
on the West Indies, gave an interesting account of his ascent of 
Morne au Diablo, a mountain on which the Diablotin formerly 
bred. It appears they are now quite extinct there, chiefly in 
consequence of the ravages of a species of Opossum, inadvertently 
introduced into Dominica some fifty years ago. 
The paper of Mr. Candler and his brother, on Bird-life in the 
Skellig Islands, two rugged and precipitous rocks off the coast 
of Kerry, was full of interest, both from the romantic character 
of the spot, and the remarkable tameness of the Gannets and 
other sea-birds nesting on these lone islands, one of which is 
uninhabitable. 
Mr. Southwell, at the September meeting, exhibited a young 
malo King Duck, shot at Hunstanton in December, 1888, now at 
b 2 
