620 Extracts from the Minute-Book of the Linnean Society. 



Toad, they were struck at and swallowed in the same 

 manner. These experiments were made on Toads 

 at full liberty and met with accidentally. Toads ge- 

 nerally return to their winter quarters about the time 

 that swallows disappear. The writer on such occasions 

 has seen them burrowing in the ground backwards, by 

 the alternate motion of their hind legs." 



To this communication Dr. Sims adds, that a tame 

 Kite, which he kept for some time, though frogs were 

 its favourite food, would never eat a Toad ; but whilst 

 killing it, which he would always do when presented to 

 him, showed signs of the greatest horror, screaming 

 aloud at every peck he gave it, and retreating a little 

 way, as if afraid of receiving some injury from it, but 

 returning again to the attack till he had deprived it of 

 life. Dr. Sims also states, that upon passing a shock 

 from a small electrical battery through a Toad, the sur- 

 face of its back was immediately covered with small 

 drops of a substance as white as milk, which seemed to 

 ooze from every pore. 

 May 24. Living specimens of [Annan borealis were presented 

 by Miss Emma Trevelyan, by whom it was discovered 

 for the first time in England on the 1st of September 

 last, growing in a plantation consisting chiefly of Scotch 

 fir, about seventy years old, at Catcherside, in the pa- 

 rish of Hartburn in Northumberland. 



Read a Letter from W. R. Whatton, Esq. to the 

 Secretary, dated Manchester, 7th November, stating 

 that in the last summer, while a Hull whale-ship was 

 beset in the ice in the North Seas, the crew took a fe- 

 male Narwhal (Monodon monoceros) with a tooth in the 

 upper jaw, perfect, and in every respect like those of 



the 



