THE NATURALIST 
ON THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF BIRDS. 
Delivered before the Members of the Ornithological Society of London. 
The Monthly General Meeting of this Society was held on Friday, Feb. 2, 
J. R. Gowen, Esq., in the chair.—The attendance, notwithstaanding the severity 
of the weather, was more numerous than on any former occasion. A great 
number of ladies occupied the front seats. 
The Report of the Council stated that Mr. Blyth had been appointed 
Assistant-Secretary and Curator of the Museum, the latter office being rendered 
necessary by the munificent loan of the Hon. W. T. Fiennes. Several donations 
were announced: among them was a collection of anatomical preparations, pre¬ 
sented by Mr. Bartlett. It was stated that the collection of living birds in 
St. James’s Park had sustained very little injury from the severity of the weather, 
and that arrangements had been made for procuring a great number of rare and 
beautiful species in the course of the ensuing spring. 
Professor Bell, Robert Blagden Hall, Esq., M.P., and Anthony White, 
M.D., were elected members of the Society. 
The report having been approved, the Chairman called upon Mr. Blyth to 
open the discussion of the day, on “ The geographical distribution of Birds.” 
Mr. Blyth then came forward and delivered an elaborate discourse on the 
geographical distribution of birds, pointing out how a variety of groups, as well as 
species, are altogether confined to particular regions, whereas other groups, and 
some of comparatively trivial value, are diffused over the greater portion of the 
world. The important revolutions which, in the course of ages, have gradually 
taken place in every locality, not only as regards the succession of inhabitant 
species, but also, in many instances, in the types of form on which these have 
been respectively modified, were descanted on at considerable length : exemplifi¬ 
cations of some of the more prominent of these changes being necessarily, how¬ 
ever, adduced from other departments of Natural History; as the known fossil 
remains of birds are proportionally extremely few, sufficient merely to awaken 
curiosity, without leading to any special conclusions; the reliques of this class 
of animals being, for obvious reasons, much less liable to become entombed in 
deposits, than those of the other divisions of Vertebrata. Taking the “ vertical 
series,” however, as it is termed, or the succession of races which inhabited the 
same locality during different eras, and what is known as the “ horizontal 
VOL. III.—no. xix. 2 A 
