1898] NOTES AND C0M3IENT8 11 



retirement, and accompany his son on the future course of the 

 Annals. 



Bulletin of the Liverpool Museums 

 De H. 0. Forbes, the director of the Derby and Mayer Museums at 

 Liverpool, is certainly to be congratulated on the form in which his 

 publication, entitled Bvlletin of the Liverpool Museums under the City 

 Council, makes its first appearance. As for the appearance itself, 

 we need not repeat, after so short an interval, the remarks that we 

 recently felt urged to make as to the multiplication of scientific 

 periodicals. The object of the present publication is to make known 

 the results of the investigations carried on in the laboratories 

 attached to the museums, and to record the observations made on 

 the animals living in the Aquarium. It is to be issued quarterly, 

 at an approximate price of 8s, per annum. The price of the first 

 number, stated on the wrapper (as we are glad to see) to have been 

 issued on August 4, is 2s. 6d. It leads off with an account of the 

 Derby and Mayer Museums, with portraits of their founders, the 

 thirteenth Earl of Derby and Mr Joseph Mayer, also of Sir William 

 Brown, who provided the building for the public library. The bulk 

 of the number, eighteen pages, is made up of the first instalment of 

 a " Catalogue of the Parrots (Psittaci) in the Derby Museum," by 

 Henry 0. Forbes and Herbert C. Eobinson ; this is illustrated by 

 two coloured plates drawn by Mr J. Smit, We understand that 

 this catalogue will eventually be issued as an independent volume. 

 The " Notes from the Museums and the Aquarium," which conclude 

 the number, contain : an account of a parasitic copepod, Penella 

 Uainvillei, attached to a flying fish, and itself covered with a colony 

 of small cirripedes, Conchoclerma virgata ; the history of an ordinary 

 stickleback living in salt water ; a description of the successful feed- 

 ing of young trout on powdered sheep's liver ; notes on Mala2Jterurus 

 clectricus ; remarks on recent acquisitions by the Mayer Museum, 

 viz., Cypriote antiquities, Neolithic flint implements from Egypt, 

 West African masks. The last note of all being both short and 

 interesting, we quote it in full as a sample of the rest, 



' Medicine ' at the Liverpool Museums 



" It may not be without interest, from a folk-lore point of view, to 

 place on record that, but a few days ago, an Irish lad suffering 

 badly from scrofulous sores was brought to the Mayer Museum by 

 his parents, who earnestly besought the authorities that they might 

 be allowed to touch the child's neck with an Irish Stone Celt, ex- 

 hibited in one of the cases. It was unavailing to try and persuade 

 the deluded and superstitious couple that no possible good could 

 follow such an application. As their faith in the efficacy of the 

 Stone could not be shaken, and they were loth to go away without 



