live. Courts and back alleys, where the very poor now hide their poverty and squalor from the rest of the world, should be got rid of; wide thoroughfares and open spaces, where the people can breathe fresh air and find recreation, should be made; and their houses should be built to secure comfort and convenience, and even to give brightness to their dull routine of life. Life is not worth living without a fair share of pleasure and amusement, but the poor of large towns have no chance of anything better than is afforded by the publichouses. As every individual has an acknowledged natural right to breathe and live, so every inhabitant of our courts and slums has a born right to live a life worth living, and, therefore, an absolute claim upon the community at large to have the place in which he is forced to dwell made fit to live in, with the possibility of health, comfort, respectability, and enjoyment.

Admitting the impracticability of a prompt and wholesale sweeping away of court houses, the writer pleaded for open spaces wherever they could be made without undue cost, and for the widening and extension of leading thoroughfares wherever practicable, especially where, by so doing, we should open out districts where the houses stand too thickly upon the ground. By doing this, highways would be made for evangelists and philanthropists of all sorts and degrees to reach the people. With the education and civilization of the people, new and better dwellings would gradually replace the present hovels, which would no longer suit their habits or satisfy their demands.

The writer then advocated the removal of certain churches in Liverpool which have lost their congregations, and are now encumbering the ground which would be useful and beneficial to the public as open spaces. He also suggested the making of a boulevard, similar to that in Prince's Road, through the densest part of the town,

selecting Marybone as a suitable site, on the ground of the urgent necessity for improvement in that part of the town, and the need of a direct thoroughfare between the Exchange and the extensive suburbs of Kirkdale and Walton.

Such a boulevard would be a park for the people, where both old and young would find recreation and amusement all the year round, and might be made the headquarters of all institutions which philanthropists devise for the benefit of the poor and needy. There might be erected churches, chapels, schools, lecture halls, news rooms, libraries, cocoa rooms, baths, laundries, workmen's dwellings, and such like, but public-houses should be rigorously excluded. Music, even if only that discoursed by German bands, would be constantly heard on the boulevard, which would also offer a fair field for public demonstrations of all kinds. Politicians would look for their constituents there, and the boulevard would be the meeting place for the classes with the masses.

Such a boulevard would increase the value of the surrounding property and that of the suburbs beyond, thereby increasing the yield of the city rates. Besides which, if the social condition and the happiness of the people were thereby increased, the cost of the boulevard would not have been spent in vain.

FIFTH ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, December 13th, 1886.

DR. CARTER, PRESIDENT, in the Chair.

Capt. Seabrooke, Liscard, was unanimously elected an Associate of the Society.

Mr. ISAAC ROBERTS exhibited another series of Star Maps recently photographed, showing Nebula in the Pleiades and

e

in Orion. The nebular area in the latter was said to be greater than in any known previous photograph.

Mr. T. J. Moore exhibited the following specimens from the Free Public Museum

BRITISH TRAP-DOOR SPIDERS.

One living male and two females of the only known species of British Trap-door Spider (Atypus piceus), with nests and preserved specimens from the South of England, specially obtained by Mr. F. Enock for Mr. Frederick Taylor, of Rainhill, by whom they have been presented to the Museum, together with various exotic species, their nests, and other illustrations.

MONOTREMES OR LOWEST FORMS OF MAMMALIAN LIFE.

A fine skin and skull of the recently discovered Threetoed Echidna, Proechidna Bruijnii (Peters and Dorie, 1876), from the northern mountainous region of New Guinea, recently purchased.

Examples from the Derby Collection of the Australian and Tasmanian Echidnas (two of the last-named lived for a short time at Knowsley in 1846, and were the first examples imported alive to Europe).

A skin of a female Echidna Lawesii (E. P. Ramsay, 1877), presented by the Rev. W. G. Lawes, corresponding member of the Society, the discoverer of the species at Port Moresby; also its skull, extracted by Mr. Oldfield Thomas, Superintendent of the Mammalian Department of the British Museum of Natural History, South Kensington, and referred to with others of the above in his "Notes on the Characters of the Different Races of Echidna," in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1885, pp. 329-339, plates XXIII and XXIV.

To complete the illustrations of the order, a stuffed specimen and a skull of the Ornithorhynchus or Duckbill

were also shown, and reference made to the pictorial groups in the Museum, in which the natural habits of the Echidnas and Duckbills have been fully displayed.

HYRAX.

A living Hyrax (Hyrax Capensis), from South Africa, lent for exhibition at the Museum and before the Society by Messrs. Moore Brothers; also a pictorial group of stuffed specimens of the Syrian Hyrax or Coney of Scripture (Hyrax sinaiticus), specially collected for the Museum by the late Mr. Hugh Heywood Jones, of Lark Hill.

Mr. WALTER LEWIN read a paper on "Walt Whitman.”*

SIXTH ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, January 10th, 1887.

DR. CARTER, PRESIDENT, in the Chair.

Mr. MCLINTOCK read a Paper on "The Faust Legend: its source and some of its earlier forms." t

SEVENTH ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, January 24th, 1887.

DR. CARTER, PRESIDENT, in the Chair.

Mr. MCLINTOCK read a Philological Note illustrative of his Paper on the Faust Legend.

Mr. R. C. JOHNSON, F.R.A.S., contributed a Note on Recent Stellar Photography, illustrated by some additional plates of Star Maps by Mr. I. ROBERTS.

* See Page 157. + See page 39.

The following paper was read:

NOTES ON PHEASANTS IN THE LIVERPOOL MUSEUM, AND ON FERTILE CROSSES BRED AT KNOWSLEY AND ELSEWHERE.

BY THOMAS J. MOORE, CORR. MEMB. Z.S.L., CURATOR.

The purpose of the present communication, or rather compilation from the writings of Tegetmeier, Gould, Sclater, and others, is to bring before the Society some points of considerable interest relating to the breeding and crossbreeding of certain members of one of the most ornamental families of birds in existence, I mean the Pheasant tribe, and also to say a few words as to the Order to which they belong, the sub-divisions of that order, and more particularly of the family of which our Common Pheasant is a characteristic example.

That order, which has been well named Rasores or Scratchers, from the common habit of scratching the ground in search of subsistence, includes birds in the highest esteem for sport and most important for food. They have stout legs and feet, small heads, curved bills, nostrils placed in a membrane partially covered by a scale, moderate necks, heavy bodies, and (the Argus Pheasant excepted) short rounded wings. Their flight is laboured and rapid, and does not usually extend far. The young are covered with down, and run and feed almost as soon as hatched.

A special feature is that the hind toe, or hallux, is usually small and raised above the plane of the toes in front.

This feature distinguishes them from the Pigeons, which some naturalists have been inclined to associate with them, but which are more naturally separated, as witnessed by their naked birth and their need of food from the parents, &c.

The Order comprises the following principal groups,