a few light brown feathers on the front of the former. By far the larger number of the feathers on the breast, back, and wings were white, but the tail was of the usual colour.—Robert M. Christy (20, Bootham, York).
Mergansers and Divers Inland.—A Red-breasted Merganser and a Black-throated Diver were shot near Banbury in January this year. The former at Edgecote, by one Harrod, a gamekeeper, the latter on the Cherwell, by a boatman named Hunt.—C. Matthew Prior (Bedford).
Little Bittern and Spotted Crake in Oxfordshire.—When in Banbury one day in December, I was asked to go and see a specimen of the Little Bittern which had been shot near that town, on the Cherwell, by one Frederick Murray, a boatman, on the 27th October, 1867. It was much knocked about, having been shot the moment it rose, but the shattered bits were collected together and stuffed by W. Wyatt for its captor. I was also shown three specimens of the Spotted Crake, which I am informed is not unfrequently obtained in the vicinity, and one of which I purchased.—Id.
Land and Freshwater Shells of Scotland.—At a meeting of the Natural History Society of Glasgow, held on March 6th, Mr. David Robertson exhibited specimens of fresh-water shells, the first of which, the little bivalve Pisidium fontinale, var. Henslowana, was taken in the Glasgow and Paisley Canal. It is the Pisidium Henslowana of Shephard, and was first discovered by Professor Henslow in the River Cam, near Cambridge. It occurs in many of the northern, eastern, and south-western counties of England, as well as in South Wales and Cork, but hitherto it has not been discovered in Scotland. Such small shells are apt to be mistaken for closely allied species, but in this case the most cursory inspection would discover the remarkable little elevated plate on each valve near the umbos, which at once distinguishes it from all its congeners. The other shell is Planorbis complanatus, and is found moderately common in Lochend Loch, Edinburgh. Mr. Robertson also showed Helix villosa, a land shell, four living specimens of which were taken on the flat ground or moors near Cardiff, by Mrs. Robertson, and not being able to refer them to any British species they were submitted to Mr. Jeffreys, who pronounced them to be Helix villosa (Drap.), and has recorded the species in the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History' for February as an addition to our British Mollusca. H. villosa inhabits Germany, France, and Switzerland, and it often occurs at a considerable height above the sea. Mr. Jeffreys refers to H. alpestris, a British variety of H. arbustorum, as having similar habits. It is met with on the Swiss Alps, in the region of perpetual snow, as well as on the marshes and banks of English rivers, an example of the great elasticity of such animals in accommodating themselves to different conditions of habitat and temperature.
