310 Miscellaneous, 



HABITS OF SNAILS OR BLACK SLUGS (aRION ATVR.). 



Several instances have been adduced of the land Helices eating 

 meat and other extraordinary substances, and I have often observed 

 the garden snails (Helix aspersa) eating the paper of the posting 

 bills from the walls of the environs of London after a shower, but I 

 was not aware until the other day, when I was near Newcastle, that 

 they would eat inorganic matter. But having met with a black slug, 

 (Arion ater,) and for safetyjplaced it in a box with some sea-sand, just 

 taken from the sea for the purpose of examining the fragments of 

 animal matter which renders it luminous when trodden on in the 

 dark, I was surprised on opening it to observe that the slug had been 

 eating the sand, until its feces, which were first of a green vege- 

 table colour, were entirely composed of pure sand, united together 

 into their usual form by a little mucus. When first the slug was 

 placed in the box, the irritation of the salt caused it to emit a quantity 

 of mucus, but it very shortly became reconciled to its abode, and 

 lived in it for several days, though the box was open ; but at length 

 escaped. — J.E. Gray. 



REGULUS MODESTUS, GOULD, A BRITISH BIRD. 



I beg to hand you a notice of a very scarce and interesting species 

 of Regulus, which I shot on the banks near Hartley, on the coast of 

 Northumberland, on the 26th of last September ; it corresponds ex- 

 actly with Gould's Regulus modestus, a species so extremely rare, 

 that he considers the individual from which he described as unique 

 in the continental collections. The description of my bird, which 

 will now entitle this species to a place in the British Fauna, is as fol- 

 lows : 



Length, 4 T L in. ; breadth, 6J in. ; length from the carpus to the 

 end of the wing, 2^ in. ; tail, IX in. ; the bill from the gape to the 

 tip nearly T 7 ^- in., and from the tips of the feathers, which extend to 

 the extremity of the nostrils, J in. 



The whole of the upper plumage a greenish yellow; on the centre 

 of the crown of the head is a streak of paler ; a light lemon-coloured 

 streak extends over the eye from the base of the bill to the occiput ; 

 a short streak of the same colour passes beneath the eye, and a nar- 

 row band of dusky passes through the eye and reaches the termina- 

 tion of the auriculars. The under parts pale yellow ; the ridge of the 

 wing bright lemon colour ; wing feathers dusky, edged with pale 

 yellow, becoming broader on the secondaries ; two conspicuous bands 

 of lemon colour cross the coverts ; the wings reach to within J in. of 



