480 Proceedings. 
Chinese workmen ; and that Mr. M‘Naughtan had sent to the Society’s 
Gardens two cases of plants from Canton. 
Joseph Hone, Esq., presented upwards of twenty of the Promissory 
Notes forming part of the circulating medium in Van Diemen’s Land in 
1823-4-5 and 6, for sums varying from 3d. to half-a-dollar, payable on 
demand. 
A spirit preparation of a bi-chephalous chick was presented by Mr. A. 
Kissock, of Liverpool-street. 
Mr. Perkins presented a sample of small nuggetty gold from Bendigo. 
Mr. H. Hull presented numerous small fragments of quartz with gold, 
collected by Mr. Douglas Hull at Specimen Hill, near Bendigo Creek, 
Victoria; also a coralline, gathered on the beach at Kelso, George Town. 
From Mr. James Dickenson was received a collection of about fifty 
geological specimens, in duplicate, from Mount Alexander, Ballaarat, and 
Bendigo, accompanied with an explanatory paper. 
From Mr. E. Jervis was received a bundle of spears and other weapons, 
obtained at New Ireland and the adjacent islands by officers of H.M.S. 
Meander. 
His Excellency Sir William Denison presented a portion of the shell of 
the gigantic ege first discovered in Madagascar in 1850. Sir William 
also placed on the table for examination a perfect specimen of this 
huge egg, brought from Bourbon by the French merchantman Desilles, 
and temporarily left in His Excellency’s possession. Three such 
eggs, together with some bones found associated with one of them 
in alluvium, were despatched in 1850 to Paris, and two of them 
reached their destination in safety in 1851. These two differed in shape, 
and that now exhibited here varies a little from both in form and dimen- 
sions. Sir William Denison described this egg as an ellipse of revolution, 
measuring through its long axis 12-4375 inches; in its short diameter 
9:25 inches; round its long circumference 33°875 inches; and round its 
middle 29° inches: haying a thickness of shell 0°15 inch, and capacity to 
contain (ascertained by actual measurement) 15 pints of water. The 
structure of the shell resembles in its interior surface that of the Dinornis, 
but on its exterior the markings approach more the flexuous striated 
aspect characteristic of the egg of the Emu. It has been estimated that 
the Dinornis Giganteus measured 94 feet in height, and that this large 
extinct bird of Madagascar must have stood about 11 feet 10 inches. It 
has been most appropriately named Apyornis Maximus. 
The Secretary placed before the meeting a sample, from a parcel 
of 25 ozs., of spurious metal, recently purchased as genuine gold- 
dust by one of the Banks in this city at the current price 
of the day. The prevailing form is that of nuggets, from the 
size of a fine pin’s head upwards, spherical or irregularly rounded, 
and more or less flattened, with projecting sharp points and ragged 
edges, in no case angular or crystalline, but having always a 
distinctly fused appearance ; it is whiter, or a shade paler, than any of 
