197 
every season to catch nightingales, to bring me a cock and hen bird 
which had paired naturally ; he did so, and, fortunately, they meated 
off very readily. By “ meating off,’ I mean that such birds as live 
on insect food will not peck at dead food until taught to do so, which 
is effected by enclosing meal-worms in a small glass tube, corked up 
at each end, and then placing the tube in their food; on pecking at 
the worm the beak slips off the glass amidst the food, which they 
swallow, and will afterwards go to it without the aid of a tube. On 
finding my birds feed freely in the small cage, in which until then I 
had confined them, I turned them into the place I had fitted up for 
them, and was much gratified, about a week afterwards, to observe 
the hen bird flying about with an oak-leaf in her beak. She made 
her nest in one of the small cages at the end of the large one ; laid 
four eggs, of which she hatched and brought up three young ones. 
During the time she was sitting, the cock sang as well and as loud as I 
ever heard one in a wild state: when the young were excluded he left 
off singing, and was most assiduous in assisting to feed and rear them. 
June 24, 1851. 
J. E. Gray, Esq., F.R.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. 
The following communications were made :— 
1. ON A NEW GENUS OF ANOMIAD&, IN THE COLLECTION 
or Mr. Cumine. 
By J. E. Gray, Ese., F.R.S., V.P.Z.S., P.B.S. etc. 
TEDINIA. 
Shell irregular, loosely lamellar ; upper or right valve with a broad 
cardinal groove, and with three muscular scars, the upper small, ob- 
long near the cartilage, the other two large, subcentral, upper sub- 
trigonal, lower oblong, transverse, united by a nearly straight medial 
cross line ; left or attached valve with an elongated, triangular, con- 
vex cardinal ridge, with a deep groove on each side, having the car- 
tilage on its inner edge, with two muscular scars, one small, half ob- 
long near the cardinal ridge, the other large, subcentral, subcircular, 
and with a roundish circular hole near the upper edge, with a slight 
impression showing the grooves to the margin some distance from 
the cardinal ridge ; the plug shelly, fixed into and exactly fitting the 
hole, with a triangular base sunk into the surface, commencing from 
the apex of the shell on the outer surface, and formed of erect shelly 
longitudinal plates within. 
The shell has the plug and much the external appearance of the 
subgenus Pododesmus, but differs from it and all the other Anomia- 
