RETROSPECTIVE REMARKS. 61 



the streams themselves, when their borders are covered. Hermann, in 

 his manuscript work, says, ' he has seen them more than once suck at 

 the drops of water which were on the leaves.' Its cocoon is an abrupt 

 oval, greyish marked, longitudinally with black bands, and shut 

 hermetically at the abrupt end. 



" Pallas tells us, that the Cossac of the borders of the Ural have a 

 sort of veneration for the Aranea speciosa, because it penetrates often 

 into the houses, and because it suspends its net to the statues of the 

 domestic divinities which are there. It is not certain that this spider 

 of Pallas ought to be referred to our species, and it is perhaps the same 

 as the Aranea irifasciata of Yorskal. The descriptions of these two 

 species resemble each other in every thing. 



" M. Ray, in his Zoologie Portative, page 54, gives to the article 

 upon Araignee portefeuille of Geoffroy, the extract of a memoir of 

 M. Dorthe's, who appeared not to have had this species in view, as 

 Ray believed, but our Epeira Jasciala, the cocoon of which he had 

 described very well. The Journal of Nat. Hist., of Bertholon, where 

 the observations of Dorthe are said to occur, not being found in the 

 imperial library, where we had sought for it in vain, we could not 

 present the results." Hist. Nat. des Araneides, No. iii. fig. 1. 



All seem to agree that this species prefers damp marshy places ; but 

 the eight specimens, which I obtained at La Heve, were all found in 

 a remarkably dry locality, about one or two hundred feet above tide 

 mark. 



Lee, Kent. 



RETROSPECTIVE REMARKS. 



BY JAMES FENNELL. 



I THINK it not improbable that your correspondent, Mr. Ball, of 

 Dublin, will, upon careful examination, find the cuckoo mentioned 

 by him at page J, of the volume just concluded, to be an American 

 species, either the Coccyzus Carolinensis, Bonaparte, or else the 

 Coccyztis erythrophtalmus, which by some persons has been con- 

 founded with the former, from which it may be easily distinguished 

 by its having, according to Wilson, " a bare wrinkled skin of a deep red 

 colour," surrounding the eye, and also by its being much smaller, and 

 its wings being destitute of the cinnamon colour observable upon that 

 species. From the circumstance of the description given in your pages 



