382 Miscellaneous. 



beautiful species of Chiton. This is a discovery of some importance 

 to the fauna of the Permian epoch. The fact of the existence of this 

 genus at so early a period, or rather an earlier one, was first made 

 known by Duchastel and Puzos, who found it in the carboniferous 

 beds of Tournay ; lately De Koninck has figured two or three species 

 from the same locality. Only two species (C. Grignonensis and C. 

 fascicularis) have been published as tertiary, and none I believe 

 have yet been discovered in the intermediate formations. This ought 

 to induce collectors to look out for the remains of this genus in the 

 secondary rocks, for in such I have no hesitation in saying that 

 they will hereafter be found. I strongly suspect that Professor Phil- 

 lips has been describing from the postal plate of some Chitons when 

 he constructed the genus Metoptoma : the corresponding plate of the 

 magnesian limestone species has precisely the form of the so-called 

 Metoptoma imbricata, M. pileus and M. sulcata. It is probable how- 

 ever that Metoptoma oblonga (judging from what appears to be a 

 muscular impression in the figure, if it represent a cast) belongs to 

 a different genus — say Capulus. 



Museum, Newcastle, Oct. 20, 1844. Wm. King. 



ON THE HABITS OF THE GODWIT. 



To the Editors of the Annals of Natural History. 



Gentlemen, 



On the reading of a paper in the Section of Natural History of the 

 British Association relating to the habits of some of our native birds, 

 the Very Reverend the President of the Section is reported in the 

 Athenaeum (No. 883.) to have made the following observation : — 



" The godwit had been mentioned : it had a long bill, and it was 

 generally supposed that birds with long bills lived by suction, but 

 this was not the case with the godwit, as it fed voraciously and 

 flourished upon barley. It could not drink in deep water, but was 

 always obliged to have recourse to the edge of a stream to drink." 



With respect to the godwit, it may be perfectly true that it feeds 

 on barley, although the fact has never come under my own observa- 

 tion, notwithstanding a very long residence on the coast, where I 

 have had opportunities of seeing hundreds of the birds in question 

 feeding on the slobs, the muddy margins of estuaries and on sandy 

 shores, as well as far inland. But though I dispute not the state- 

 ment as to the godwit's grain-eating propensities, I most positively 

 assert that it also frequently "bores" in moist earth in search of 

 food, in a similar manner to the snipe, having frequently seen it do 

 so along the margins of freshwater streams, which at low water run 

 over sandy or muddy flats, and where the sand or mud is not very 

 compact. Another favourite haunt of the godwit is by the sides of 

 the channels left at low tide in salt-water lagoons. The bill is then 

 inserted in the soft mud or sand to its base, apparently for the pur- 

 pose of securing such objects of food as harbour beneath the surface. 



As to snipes and other long-billed birds living on suction nothing 

 can be more opposed to fact, for the snipes feed on the larvae of in- 



