NaturaL History Notes. Dil 
recognise. He got down in the evening, when he found the fish 
lying at the foot of the cliffs. It was a large specimen, 5 feet long 
and 32 inches in girth behind the first dorsal. It displayed 
brilliantly iridescent colours, silvery white beneath and _ultra- 
marine blue as to the fore part of the shoulders. Behind the 
dorsal fins there was a reddish colouration, and the whole aspect 
of the monster was foreign to our fishes. He found it to be the 
Maigre, a well-known Mediterranean fish that is also found in 
Atlantic waters on the North African and Portuguese coasts. 
Only some two instances of the occurrence of the Maigre on the 
coasts of Scotland had been hitherto recorded, and this was the 
first in our own area, and indeed over the whole of the western 
coast, till Cape Wrath is rounded. He could not preserve at the 
time such a large fish, but he took a few of the scales, and these 
were quite sufficient to enable an expert to identify the monster 
by. Another item to which he invited the notice of the society 
was one of the rarest birds which he had come upon in this area— 
a specimen of the Ruff, shot on Tuesday, by Mr Quinn, the head 
keeper at Lord Herries’s Caerlaverock estate, near the shore. 
He had never previously seen this bird in the area, but he under- 
stood that some three or four had been got at various times, 
though a considerable period since. In the summer the bird has 
a rich plumaged ruff or tippet, no two, however, being alike. 
Some were barred with brown, some were almost black, and some 
were white. Shortly after the breeding season was over the dress 
of the summer disappeared, and the bird became a rather in- 
elegant creature. Mr Service next exhibited two larvae of the 
Death’s Head Moth, which had been found a week or two ago on 
the farm of Townhead in Closeburn when potatoes were being 
dug. At one time the Death’s Head Moth was an excessively rare 
insect, and he had no doubt whatever that*at the present moment 
it was becoming a comparatively common species. Year after 
year they were being noted, whereas formerly five or six years 
passed without one being heard of. He remembered the late Mr 
Lennon, who was a most enthusiastic entomologist, saying to him 
that it was quite an event in his life-time to find one of these 
moths. In 1897 the president (Professor Scott-Elliot) brought 
him a larva, which turned out to be the first specimen that was 
ever got in Scotland. A second turned up that same season from 
Kirkmahoe, but Professor Elliot’s was the first. In 1899 no 
