useful foreign animals, and among these it has devoted especial attention to the Cracidæ. Soon after the formation of its menagerie, its late esteemed Secretary, Mr. Bennett, thus wrote:—"Of all the Gallinaceous birds in the collection, the most interesting are those which hold out to us a prospect of supplying our farm-yards with new breeds of Poultry of a superior kind. Such are especially the Curassows. In many parts of South America these birds have long been reclaimed; and it is really surprising, considering the extreme familiarity of their manners, and the facility with which they appear to pass from a state of nature to the tameness of domestic fowls, that they have not yet been introduced into the poultry-yards of Europe. That with proper treatment they would speedily become habituated to the climate, we have no reason to doubt; on the contrary, numerous examples have shewn that they thrive well even in its northern parts; and M. Temminck informs us, that they have once at least been thoroughly acclimated in Holland, where they were as prolific in their domesticated state as any of our common poultry. The establishment, however, in which this had been effected, was broken up by the civil commotions which followed in the train of the French Revolution, and all the pains which had been bestowed upon the education of these birds, were lost to the world by their sudden and complete dispersion. The task which had at that time been in some measure accomplished still remains to be performed; and it may not be too much to expect that the Zoological Society may be successful in perfecting what was then so well begun, and in naturalizing the
