ZOOLOGY. 309 



moved in the respiratory process. The fact of an animal's becoming 

 habituated to a poison is not new. Men eat arsenic, opium, and 

 tobacco, until their daily dose is sufficient to kill from two to ten of 

 their species. Sheep have been known to eat poisonous plants until 

 their mutton produced serious effects on those who ate it. Hedge- 

 hogs will eat anything, and toads are indifferent to prussic acid. 

 Drawings of three acari discovered were exhibited, and Mr. Attfield 

 said that Mr. Busk had decided that those found on the extracts of 

 colocynth and taraxacum belonged to the same genus, but were of 

 different species, and that those existing on nux vornica were gener- 

 ally different from others. 



Mr. Deane noticed that the acari figured greatly resembled some 

 found a few years ago under very peculiar circumstances. At a vil- 

 lage near Colchester, the name of which we did not catch, a church 

 was rebuilt, the floor being lowered to within a few inches of some 

 coffins that had lain under ground for two or three centuries. Soon 

 after the new church was opened the pews were found to be infested 

 with mites, so numerous in some places as nearly to hide the fittings. 

 It turned out to be a new species of acarus, and received the name 

 of Acarus ecclesiasticus. The parishioners were greatly alarmed at 

 the visitation, and regarded it as a judgment of the Almighty for 

 desecrating the graves of their forefathers. Mr. Deane added that 

 the animal was very like that claimed to have been made by galvan- 

 ism, some years ago, by the late Mr. Cross. 



THE SNOUT OF THE HOG. 



At a recent meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, Mr. 

 Wilder described the muscles which move the snout of the hog. The 

 elevator has a very long tendon, and its muscular attachment is very 

 far back, protected by a long ridge, and safe from all ordinary acci- 

 dents; the depressor, on the contrary, is very short, and attached 

 very near the terminal cartilage, both muscles of the important organ 

 being thus protected from injury. He remarked that while we con- 

 sider the long snout of the hog, compared with that of common ani- 

 mals, as a sign of what we know to be his beastly nature, yet the 

 same organ, still further prolonged into the trunk of the elephant, 

 changes its function with the nature of the animal so as to be capable 

 of executing very various and delicate motions. So that it is not 

 always safe to take a single organ as an index of the nature of the 

 possessor. 





X 



