94 The Scottish Naturalist. 



The Perthshire Society of Natural Science has commenced the publication of a 

 catalogue of the animals inhabiting Perthshire. The part just published contains 

 a list of the Lepidoptera, and is illustrated by a coloured map of the county. 



Bridge of Allan Museun of Natural History.— We take the following 

 from the "Edinburgh Daily Review? and venture to hope that the suggestion 

 of a proper arrangement of the Geological and Zoological specimens will not be 

 overlooked by the trustees of the museum : — 



"The collection was made by the late John Macfarlane, Esq, of Coneyhill, 

 and occupies a suite of apartments situated upon an elevated terrace bearing the 

 name of the founder. The shells are set down at 20,000 specimens, the birds 

 at 500, and quadrupeds at 300. The collection is deficient in classification, and 

 therefore in educational value. It includes a number of select fossils tossed to- 

 gether in confusion, but which might be rendered serviceable as geological 

 illustrations. A portion of the museum is devoted to works of art, embracing 

 some excellent casts of classic statuary, and no end of wretched pictures, which 

 the trustees are judiciously weeding out. There is, in addition, a miscellaneous 

 series of objects coming under the category of curiosities. With all its defi- 

 ciencies, the collection must have involved no little expenditure of money and 

 attention, and it affords striking evidence of what a man can do in this way 

 single-handed, even in the obscurity of a rural village. The trustees would 

 greatly enhance its value by getting the arrangement thoroughly overhauled by 

 a competent hand. The museum merits more of public support than it seems 

 to receive. It is to be hoped that the trustees may see their way to its efficient 

 maintenance, both in honour of the founder's memory and as a boon and a 

 credit to the neighbourhood.' 1 



A Suggestion for the Improvement of Loch Trout.— Scattered over 

 the extensive parish of North-maven, in the extreme north of the mainland of 

 Shetland, there are several fresh-water lochs that afford excellent sport in rod- 

 fishing. The denizens of one of them, " Pundswater " by name, far exceed in 

 size the trout in any of the other sheets of water. The probable cause of this 

 superiority may be the peculiar nature of the food in Pundswater. The exami- 

 nation of the contents of the stomachs of the trout taken from it shewed that 

 they fed largely on Gammarus pulex, (See S. Bates' Brit. Crustacea, vol. 1, p. 

 388.) This small crustacean seemed to form the chief pabulum, while not a 

 single instance of it was met with in some trout taken from two of the adjoining 

 lochs. Mr. Spence Bate, to whom specimens of this crustacean were sent, 4( can 

 see no reason to doubt their being the ordinary species — G. pulex '' ; and in the 

 volume referred to, p. 390, he says, "We have found this animal — G. pulex — 

 in almost every stream that wc have looked for them. They are sometimes 

 common in shallow overgrown ditches. Sometimes, as in a field in Carmarthen- 

 shire, they are so abundant that a single dip of the sieve will bring up perhaps 

 a hundred specimens." It is to be hoped some of your correspondents will be 

 able to state their occurrence, frequency, &c, in other parts of Scotland. 

 Might it not then be worth while to introduce them into our smaller lochs and 

 fish ponds? an experiment not difficult, but likely to increase the size of trout. 

 No difference was observable in the water, bottom soil, or plants, of Punds- 

 water, so as to indicate that it, among the Shetland fresh-water lochs, was 

 exclusively adapted for the support and increase of Gammarus pulex. — G. 

 Gordon, Manse of Birnie, Elgin. 



