94 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
ORDINARY MEETING (540th MEETING).
SATURDAY, 28TH JANUARY, 1922.
This meeting was held at 3 o'clock on the above afternoon in the Physi-
cal Lecture Theatre of the Municipal College, Romford Road, Stratford,
the President, Mr. Robert Paulson, F.L.S., F.R.M.S., being in the chair.
48 members were present.
Mr. Colney Campbell, of 96, New River Crescent, Palmer's Green, N.13,
was elected a member of the Club.
Mr. J. Avery exhibited and described a series of 18 Essex prints from
bis private collection.
Mr. H. Mothersole exhibited, and presented to the Club's Museum, a
portion of Baleen, inscribed as being from the example of Common Rorqual
(Balaenoptera musculus), which was captured in the River Crouch, near
Burnham, on February 12th, 1891; a description and drawing of this
whale, by the late Mr. Walter Crouch, appeared in the Essex Naturalist,
v., 1891, p. 124.
The Curator exhibited a series of twenty nestling birds, acquired for
the Club's Museum by purchase, and called attention to the mottled
markings of the down, which were believed to represent the original adult
plumage of ancestral forms of birds.
Mr. Thompson also exhibited an excellent series of fifty skins of
Canadian birds, collected by our member, Mr. G. A. Hardy, in Western
Alberta, and which he had generously presented to the Club's Museum.
On the President's invitation Mr. Hardy described his collection, and
gave interesting details from personal observation of the habits of the
birds in their native haunts. The following is a resume of Mr. Hardy's
remarks:—
On Some Canadian Birds.
From Essex to Alberta, Western Canada, is a far cry; fortunately,
birds do not confine themselves to arbitrary boundaries, hence, on looking
over a collection of Canadian birds, such as this, we find several that make
one feel at home, no matter on which side of the ocean one is placed.
One bird in particular, the Horned Grebe (Colymbus auritus), is
identical with the British form; and the Wilson's Snipe (Gallinago delicata)
is at first glance undistinguishable from the Common Snipe (G. coelestis);
these forms meet on common ground in Greenland, during the summer.
The Solitary Sandpiper (Helodromas solitarius), which replaces the
British Green Sandpiper (Totanus ochropus), and the Yellowshank (7".
flavipes), which is as common as our Redshank (7. Calidris), are both
occasional stragglers to these shores; the Yellowshank, as recently as
last summer, to its cost.
Apart from the Holarctic Region—that portion of the merged arctic
extension of the Nearctic and Palaearctic Regions where, the environment
being constant and continuous, the fauna is so likewse—it is chiefly
among the aquatic birds that examples are found common to the latter
two regions, many of them being circumpolar in their distribution. Of
this group, more characteristic of the new world are the Blue-Winged
Teal (Querquedula discors), an inland duck, Wilson's Phalarope (Steganopus
tricolor), among the first in spring to enliven the "sloughs" with its dainty