428 Miscellaneous. 



pearauce. I brought one down with me from the summit of the 

 mountain Maruk, which is eleven hundred feet above the Ganges, 

 and he measured six inches across the legs when set up. It was in 

 the web of this very spider that I found the bird entangled, and the 

 young spiders (about eight in number and entirely of a brick-red 

 colour) feeding upon the carcass. The bird was much decomposed 

 and enveloped in web, but the beak and feet being visible I sketched 

 them, a copy of which sketch I enclose for your satisfaction*. The 

 bird hung with his head downwards, his vrings were closely pinioned to 

 his sides by the entwined web, and was nearly in the centre of the 

 web. The old spider which I secured was above the bird about a 

 foot removed. 



Had we not been a half-starved party, we should have bottled the 

 bird, spider and young ones ; but we were at the end of a five-days' 

 roam amongst these steep hills, covered with wet grass, without beds 

 or covering, in the height of the rainy season — so you may imagine 

 our commissariat was at too low an ebb to afford brandy for such a 

 purpose ! 



Note by Mr. Blyth. — This communication from Capt. Sherwill is 

 the more interesting, since the total demolition of Madam Merian's 

 account of a bird-eating spider in Surinam, by Mr. W. S. M*^Leay, 

 in the 'Proceedings of the Zoological Society,' 1834. This species 

 would appear to be an Ejieira, most probably undescribed, and re- 

 markable for the "bright yellow colour" of its web. — From the 

 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, p. 474. 



On the Conjugation o/"Diplozoon paradoxum. By Prof. Th. von 



SlEBOLDf. 



Prof. Siebold was struck by the constant presence of another para- 

 site in company vdth the Diplozoon upon the gills of the Minnow. 

 This parasite was the Diporpa of Dujardin, which differs from Diplo- 

 zoon only in being single, and much smaller — in haA-ing only two in- 

 stead of eight posterior organs of adhesion — and in being destitute of 

 generative organs. 



Further, Diporpa has on the ventral surface, a little behind the 

 middle of the body, a sucking disk. 



Now, besides the solitary Diporpee, some were found mutually 

 adherent by their sucking disks, and others still more closely united, 

 in which all traces of the disks had disappeared and a local fusion of 

 the two Diporpee had taken place. 



They had taken on completely the appearance oi & Diplozoon — four, 

 sLx, and in some cases eight "organs of adhesion" having become 

 developed at their posterior extremities — so that it was very clear that 

 two simple asexual Diporpee become fused together to form a single 

 Diplozoon. 



It follows then that a process of conjugation takes place here, such 



* A Nectarinia apparently, and probably iV. asiatica — E. Blyth. 

 t From Siebold and KoUiker's Zeitschrift der Wissensch. Zool. for 

 March, 1851, 



