TO THE PRESIDENT AND COUNCIL 
OF THE 
OF VICTORIA. 
Gentlemen, 
I have the honour to report that I returned from Europe on 
December 22nd, and will now give a detailed account of my trip. 
When I left Melbourne in the ss. Gulf of Taranto the agents of 
that vessel expected her to arrive in London by August 20th, in 
time for the Zoological Congress, but various delays occurred, 
especially from having unexpectedly to call at Colombo, and also 
from bad weather, consequently she was a week longer on her 
voyage than anticipated, so I had to leave her at Port Said and go 
on to Naples by another steamer, and then proceed overland straight 
to London, arriving there on Saturday, August 20th. I went to 
Cambridge on Monday, the 22nd, that being the day the Congress 
opened, and I attended all the Zoological meetings during the week 
it lasted. The books of photographs I took, both of our Gardens 
and also of nests of Australian birds, were publicly exhibited at 
the local Museum. 
Only the first two numbers of the journal of the proceedings of 
the Congress have so far come to hand. The article I wrote, 
entitled 11 The Mound-Building Birds of Aus- 
London Zoo. tralia,” is being published and illustrated in the 
Gardens. Ibis, which is the leading ornithological publi¬ 
cation in England. I met most of the Directors 
of the European Zoological Gardens, and also Mr. Sanyal, Super¬ 
intendent of the Calcutta Gardens. At the conclusion of the 
business at Cambridge, the members of the Congress adjourned 
to London, and on Saturday afternoon, at the invitation of the 
President and Council of the Zoological Society, visited the London 
Zoological Gardens. A most interesting series of Giant Tortoises 
were exhibited here, which collection had been formed by the 
Hon. Walter Rothschild. They consisted of sixty-five specimens, 
belonging to six species, three from Aldabra Island, the largest of 
